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Atlas V's Sonic Boom Made Visible By SundogRoss-Shire Geek writes "Atlas V lifted off on Feb 11 from Kennedy. As it goes supersonic through a sundog (aka parhelion) you can see (video link) wonderful visible ripples of the shock wave in the sky."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 21 Feb 2010 | 3:08 am Geo-engineering: the planet's savior or untested danger?US researchers are studying the steam from ships, condensation trails of airplanes and volcanic eruptions as they try to understand how and even if the fledgling science of geo-engineering...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Feb 2010 | 2:56 am Mobile phones become pocket banks in poor countriesThe Economic Times of India has an interesting article on mobile banking, quoting figures from the GSM Association, an industry group of 800 wireless operators. Mobile money applications are emerging...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Feb 2010 | 1:54 am Got an idea for an app? Sony Ericsson wants to hear from youSpotted on Shiny Shiny, Sony Ericsson's new community site SE-dot, dedicated to general users rather than just developers, encouraging them to submit their ideas for a new app. In their own words:...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Feb 2010 | 1:37 am Apple doubles iPhone's 3G app download limitAccording to Fierce Mobile Content, Apple has boosted the maximum size of an iPhone app download over 3G from 10 MB to 20 MB. Previously, users who wanted to download an app larger than 10 MB had to switch...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Feb 2010 | 1:30 am Amazon to launch Free Kindle App for BlackBerry DevicesAccording to Mobiledia, Amazon is launching a free Kindle application to give BlackBerry users access to over 420,000 books on their handsets. The new program, called "Kindle for Blackberry", will let...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Feb 2010 | 1:26 am Weather outlook not positive for Endeavour's landing - Spaceflight Now
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 21 Feb 2010 | 1:11 am Schools in China say they weren't behind hacking (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 21 Feb 2010 | 1:08 am Mashable gets a new appMashables new free iPhone app is live in the App Store, offering an entirely new interface and a bunch of new features. These include: 1. Browse by channel, category, tag or author 2. Share stories...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Feb 2010 | 12:53 am The New App Store Rules: No Swimsuits, No Skin, And No InnuendoApple apparently bans all sexy or suggestive apps from iPhone App Store. [via TechCrunch]Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Feb 2010 | 12:50 am China urges 'red' textsIn China to celebrate this Spring season, government officials are promoting a "red message" campaign to counter Internet and cell-phone pornography. CRI English reports. Red messages cover a wide spectrum...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Feb 2010 | 12:15 am Cries for Help via Text Messages Are Used to Direct Aid to HaitiThe New York Times on how the Coast Guard plays a part as an SMS emergency contact network for Haitians. ... To get the word out about the new program, the distress code number 4636 was sent to every...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Feb 2010 | 12:08 am Stone Tools Found on Crete Push Back Humans' Maritime HistoryThe New York Times reports that stone tools discovered on the Greek island of Crete, and reported last month at an academic conference, are strong evidence for rethinking the maritime capabilities of early humans. The researchers who found the tools (hand-axes, cleavers, and scrapers) estimate them to be at least 130,000 years old; if they're right, humans have been traveling long distances at sea (Crete is 200 miles from the northern African coastline) for at least several tens of thousands of years longer than earlier believed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 21 Feb 2010 | 12:03 am Apple removing risque iPhone apps: reports (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Feb 2010 | 11:41 pm Australia whale threats won't hurt ties: JapanAustralia's threat to take Tokyo to court over its controversial whaling programme was "unfortunate" but would not hurt ties between the major trading partners, Japan's foreign minister...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Feb 2010 | 11:02 pm A-Twitter over glitchy Facebook - Boston Herald
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 Feb 2010 | 10:05 pm Updated KODAK Photo Scanning Software Enhances Workflow, Creative Control for the KODAK s1220 Photo Scanning SystemSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Feb 2010 | 10:01 pm Eastman Kodak Company to Introduce Two New UV-Curable Media Offerings at PMA 2010Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Feb 2010 | 10:01 pm Eastman Kodak Company Showcases Solutions for Retailers, Photofinishers and Professional Labs at PMA 2010Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Feb 2010 | 10:01 pm New 'Emotional Technology' in KODAK Picture Kiosks Creates Opportunity to Tap into Trillions of ImagesSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Feb 2010 | 10:01 pm Fnord: conspiracy is job one Fans of Robert Anton Wilson, the Principia Discordia, and the Church of the Subgenius will appreciate this delightful logo. To understand (or rather experience the illusion that you understand) the meaning of "fnord," I direct you first to the references I listed above, the contents of which are inextricably linked to the original bOING bOING print 'zine, and also the Fnord wikipedia page, where I found the image above.  Source: Boing Boing | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:49 pm Molecular structure jewelry
I dig these geek chic molecular necklaces featured in our Boing Boing Bazaar at the Makers Market! Above is caffeine (left) and dopamine (right). Also available: serotonin, DMT, and others! Makers Market: Made With Molecules Source: Boing Boing | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:47 pm Jacket design for Mark's new book!
I know Mark will be embarrassed that I posted this, but I just can't resist. Seen here is the fantastic cover for Mark's new book, Made By Hand: Searching For Meaning In A Throwaway World, due out May 27. (And yes, he made those cigar box guitars himself.) Congrats, buddy! We're so proud of you!
Source: Boing Boing | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:46 pm 32 Dead as Violent Storm Hits MadeiraFloods and landslides demolish houses and hospitalize 68 people on the Portuguese island off the northwest coast of Africa.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:27 pm Jacket design for Mark's new book!I know Mark will be embarrassed that I posted this, but I just can't resist. Seen here is the fantastic cover for Mark's new book, Made By Hand: Searching For Meaning In A Throwaway World, due out May...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:01 pm New 'Emotional Technology' in KODAK Picture Kiosks Creates Opportunity to Tap into Trillions of ImagesANAHEIM, Calif., Feb.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:01 pm Updated KODAK Photo Scanning Software Enhances Workflow, Creative Control for the KODAK s1220 Photo Scanning SystemANAHEIM, Calif., Feb. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Fast, powerful, compact and user-friendly, the KODAK s1220 Photo Scanning System offers businesses the opportunity for a new high margin revenue stream.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:01 pm Photoshop 1.0 Recreated On iPhoneDotnaught writes "Photoshop co-creator Russell Brown asked Ansca Mobile to re-create Photoshop 1.0, originally introduced in 1990, for the iPhone. The resulting app, created in three days using the Corona SDK, was distributed to 50 attendees of an event celebrating Photoshop's 20th anniversary. Programmer Evan Kirchhoff in a blog post explains that Ansca took the project on to prove its claims about how Corona makes iPhone development faster."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 20 Feb 2010 | 9:00 pm Over 5000 apps stricken from the Apple app store, new rules in place
Things just got a lot more wholesome in Apple’s app store as a boat load of apps were just banned, and new rules for future apps have been put into place. Bring on the lynch mob! Just the other day an Apple developer was ticked when his app, Wobble iBoobs, was pulled from the app store without warning. The app didn’t contain any questionable content; all it did was modify potentially salacious images and that was enough for Apple to cut it loose. The makers of the app spoke with Apple, and although the latter is notorious for doing things on a whim without an explanation, it actually laid down some new rules for third-party applications (and some that applied specifically to Wobble).
There you have it. Apple is coming out and saying, “We’ll have none of this, that, this and that and some more of that.” It’s too bad we all can’t be adults about this, or enjoy somewhat adult content on our iPhones, but there’s always the jailbreaking route. [via Chillfresh]
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 Feb 2010 | 8:58 pm The AP Is Using Twitter To Send People To Facebook. Wait. What?
The AP is using their Twitter feed to tweet out their stories — nothing new there, obviously — but every single one of them links to the story on their Facebook Notes page. It’s not clear how long they’ve been doing this, but Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan noted the oddness of this, and how annoying it is, tonight. The AP obviously has a ton of media partners, and they could easily link to any of those, or even the story hosted on their own site. But no, instead they’re copying all these stories to their Facebook page and linking there for no apparent reason. As Sullivan notes in a follow-up tweet, “i really miss when people had web sites they owned and pointed at. why lease your soul to facebook. or buzz. or whatever. master your domain.” What’s really odd about this is the AP’s recent scuffle with Google over the hosting of AP content. The two sides appeared to reach some sort of deal earlier this month (after months of threats and actual pulled content), but now the AP is just hosting all this content on Facebook for the hell of it? Sure, maybe they think that by hosting the content on Facebook, they’re being impartial with the tweets. But again, why not just use their own site? When I asked Sullivan to elaborate on this issue, he made a good point, “funny, they seem to get social (twitter & facebook) more than basic SEO (the core of their issues with Google).” Oh the AP; the amusement never ends.      
Source: TechCrunch | 20 Feb 2010 | 8:55 pm NYTimes execs confident pay wall on NYTimes.com and iPhone app will increase revenues
Times executives at a PaidContent.org conference explained that NYTimes.com will implement a “metered model” early next year. The newspaper made the announcement a month ago, but provided additional information at the conference. Under the new model, people will be able to read a set number of articles for free before they are eventually asked to pay for reading new articles. This method would allow The Times to earn money from subscriptions but still have a high level of traffic in order to charge advertisers for appearing on its website. The “metered model” will also extend to the popular NY Times iPhone application. Executives revealed that their iPhone app has been downloaded more than 3.2 million times and it would be updated to reflect the change in strategy when NYTimes.com begins charging readers. The Times already tried getting readers to pay for certain content with their TimesSelect subscription service, which was ended after 18 months. What makes this scenario any different? Nothing. Times executives remained confident during a panel at the PaidContent.org conference. When asked if they might repeat the failures of TimesSelect, Janet Robinson said, “[TimesSelect] was not a failure. It proved that people were willing to pay for content, certainly of a premium nature.” Then why did The Times abandon TimesSelect? “We were making good money off of TimeSelect,” responded CEO Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. “We simply knew we could make more by taking it down.” Read [Yahoo] It sort of reminds me of those old books on a single building—Castles or Pyramids or what have you—where you could look at the huge, detailed illustrations and imagine dozens of little stories unfolding in every corner. Attention is even given to the world in which the Crawler Town dwells. As DeGobbi describes it:
I'm even willing to excuse the machine-city's "Eco-punk" designation just because it's so damn cool. [Flickr via Brothers Brick] Source: Gizmodo | 20 Feb 2010 | 8:00 pm Yes we can make “hellabytes” an SI-recognized term
Honestly, it would hardly ever refer to anything except on the most astronomical of scales. One hellameter would be something like a billion light-years, and the limit of the universe as we know it seems to be, well, a fraction of that. A hellasecond would be about a two and a half million times the age of our galaxy. So really, there’s no danger of people who don’t like hella having to say it all the time. Come on people, let’s do this. [via Reddit]
Source: CrunchGear | 20 Feb 2010 | 7:56 pm Samsung keeps the mini-camcorder war rolling, announces two new models
The HMX-U20 does have a couple of innovative features (at least to the market segment) this time around. The USB connection is via a USB cable, both have image stabilization, and more importantly, the U20 has a 3x optical zoom. The U15 doesn’t, but it adds the ability to take still pictures. I’m not 100% sure why you’d want to, but it’ll be there. I think I’d rather have the optical zoom. The general specs are still the same, 2-inch LCD, recording resolution is still 1920×1080, and the U20 and U15 are available in either blue, red, silver, or black. The HMX-U20 (with the 3x optical zoom) will sell for $249, and the U15 (with 10mp stills) will be priced at $229 when they come available this spring.
Have you secretly harbored Desire-envy ever since its unveiling at MWC? This is your chance to close the gap; the Desire ROM will give you its Sense UI as well as support for Flash 10.1, apparently. Of course, this is all very experimental, so things are buggy and it's more of a curiosity than a permanent makeover. But a cool curiosity, nonetheless. As usual, proceed with extreme caution. [Redmond Pie via Boy Genius Report] Source: Gizmodo | 20 Feb 2010 | 7:00 pm Hot gaming news for the week of 2-14-2010Section:  No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you! Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 Feb 2010 | 6:03 pm "Immortal Molecule" Evolves — How Close To Synthetic Life?An anonymous reader writes with word of ongoing work at Scripps Research Institute: "Can life arise from nothing but a chaotic assortment of basic molecules? The answer is a lot closer following a series of ingenious experiments that have shown evolution at work in non-living molecules."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Really bleak. Like no racy photos, no suggestive language, no bathing suits bleak. This devastating news comes by way of TechCrunch, who has been following this story closely (but not in a weird way). Initially it seemed that Apple's new policy was to ban "overtly sexual content," which was disappointing, but, you know, understandable. Now TC has received word from a developer who has discussed the matter with "multiple App Store reviewers," and things aren't looking too hot. Not even close to hot, in fact. Said developer was told "there will be no more applications that are for any purpose of excitement or titillation." Huh? I get pretty excited playing Tapulous—are they going to ban that too? Well, if you're thinking that maybe behind the hyperbole things aren't actually so bad, think again. Here's the full shakedown, as recapped by the developer of Wobble, an individual who has been standing in the shower since Apple first turned on the cold water on Thursday night:
This can't be life! Of course, the glimmer of hope here is that Apple is still reviewing their policy and taking a hard line while doing so, just to be safe. On the other hand, this could it, the real deal, the Puritanical future of apps on the iPhone. I hope you have a thing for girls in turtlenecks. [TechCrunch] The team has been working on the vehicle since 2005, and with each successive year they've managed to shed weight and ramp up mileage. In its current state it weighs only 96 pounds, and can hit a top speed of 30 MPH with its Honda 50cc engine. In the last three Shell Eco-Marathons—a competition for student-made, energy-efficient vehicles—the Black Widow placed either first or second. The competition takes place at the end of March, and this year the California Polytechnic State team will double its chances by entering a second vehicle, also with three wheels, in the Urban Concept category. The Black Widow may not be the fastest car or the most powerful, but it will almost certainly get you where you need to go. [Wired via Inhabitat] Source: Gizmodo | 20 Feb 2010 | 5:15 pm Barometer of progress on climate change - Financial Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 Feb 2010 | 5:02 pm NASA: Weather iffy for space shuttle return SundaySpace shuttle Endeavour aimed for a Sunday night landing back at NASA's spaceport, but rainy and cloudy weather threatened to delay the astronauts' homecoming. Endeavour and its crew of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Feb 2010 | 4:42 pm Weekend Update 2.20.10 – Set It and Forget It Edition [Digital Daily]
Woah, sorry, we may have gotten just a little over excited about Walt’s Personal Technology column this week. He responded to some popular demand and submitted a full review of the magicJack. Yes, that magicJack. No one can ever accuse Walt Mossberg of not being a man of the people. So what did he find? Well, the little plastic USB dongle that ranks up there with rotisseries, Chia pets and The Clapper in the pantheon of hard sell TV adds actually delivered on its promise. MagicJack connects via USB to a computer, and has a standard land line telephone jack on the other end. Walt started it up, made some calls, and even tried out their customer service center, which turned out to be efficient and helpful. Among the few drawbacks were the need to use the phone number that comes with the device, and the fact that it only works when your computer is on and connected to the internet. Mossberg’s Mailbox was full to the brim this week with some pretty targeted questions about security, the grim future of the dedicated PDA and e-readers for libraries. As it turns out, running a virtual Windows machine on a Mac can lead to a very real virus if you aren’t careful. Katie’s piece at The Mossberg Solution made sense of this week’s biggest question mark. What the heck is Google (GOOG) Buzz? She broke the new social network from Google down to its bare bones and explained some of the controversy surrounding how it decides who you might like to add to you Buzz list. The new social feature is now built in to Gmail, but it seems the exact relationship between your Gmail contacts and Buzz is still being worked out. Katie nails it all with an expertly simple explanation of the service and controversies. BoomTown started the week off with a little insider info about Micheal Dearing, the hottest angel investor you’ve never heard of. Dearing, a former eBay (EBAY) exec and current professor at Stanford’s design school, has been inside early on high profile start-ups like Aardvark, Xoopit and Mixer Labs. Kara shared a meal with the start-up whisperer and got more out of him than most have, even if he still kept pretty tight lipped. Kara also shared some viral video love featuring some hardcore Avatar fans. We can’t tell if these live action Na’vi role players are kidding. Maybe we’ll ask their king, James Cameron, when he joins Kara on stage at the next D conference. Toward the end of the week, Kara posted about what may be the strangest love triangle of the modern era. The Facebook-Snickers-Betty White trifecta is so strange we can barely even comprehend the letters in it. It seems that Facebook users loved the Betty White Super Bowl ad for Snickers so much that they held a social media gun to Lorne Micheal’s head until he got the golden girl to host SNL. The only thing that could unseat the Betty White triangle from weirdest social media moment of ‘10 is the much rumored Barry White-KFC-America’s Next Top Model episode we’ve been hearing about. There, rumor started. MediaMemo led off the week with Weekend Update’s favorite sort of post. It was yet another beautiful e-mag concept, this time from Condé Nast’s Wired. The mag looked snappy, beautiful and functional- even if no one, besides maybe Stephen Colbert, has a device that can display it yet. Peter also covered the second instance of an emerging trend in the video rental business. It looks like Redbox, the ever present rental kiosk has agreed to go the way of Netflix (NFLX) and keep recently released DVDs out of the rental pool in exchange for a cash break from Warner. Peter rounded things out with a post about web TV service Hulu, and the likelihood of a Hulu player for the iPad. Peter’s post explores the probability that an iPad Hulu would not be a free Hulu. This situation is pretty bounded and specific, but the deeper question is one facing a great many media companies right now. Will users be willing to pay for convenience of displaying a service on the iPad that they can get for free on there home computer, and by extension, will they pay by the app or pay for the content? Weekend Update can’t wait to see how that one shakes out. Over at Digital Daily, John started early in the week with a quick peek at Windows Phone, the new smart phone OS from the makers of Windows Mobile and Windows Vista. As it turns out, Windows Phone looks pretty slick. The interface isn’t a shrunken version of the desktop OS, which is a very good thing. Midweek, John scaled a mountain of tweets to report from the very top. It seems that twitter’s traffic has grown over 1000 percent since last year, according to comScore’s (SCOR) January report. It may now be impossible to shut the flock up. To button up the week, John covered a decision by the FTC that allows Google to buy and sell power wholesale, just like an energy utility. Google execs insist that the move doesn’t signal their intention to enter the power arena as a utility. They just want to buy power like anyone else. After all, electricity is the raw material of Googling. We’re so confident that you’ve enjoyed this weekend update that if you aren’t 100 percent satisfied, you can send it back for a full refund of your purchase price, no questions asked. You can look for all your favorite AllThingsD accessories next week. John, Peter Kara and Walt will be back to ship top quality content directly to your door at no extra charge. Top quality, easy to use and in a variety of colors, there’s something for everyone at AllThingsD. And now back to your regularly scheduled program. Source: All Things Digital | 20 Feb 2010 | 4:33 pm Fingerprint Requirement For a Work-Study Job?BonesSB writes "I'm a student at a university in Massachusetts, where I have a federal work-study position. Yesterday, I got an email from the office that is responsible for student run organizations (one of which I work for) saying that I need to go to their office and have my finger prints taken for the purposes of clocking in and out of work. This raises huge privacy concerns for me, as it should for everybody else. I am in the process of contacting the local newspaper, getting the word out to students everywhere, and talking directly to the office regarding this. I got an email back with two very contradictory sentences: 'There will be no image of your fingerprints anywhere. No one will have access to your fingerprints. The machine is storing your prints as a means of identifying who you are when you touch it.' Does anybody else attend a school that requires something similar? This is an obvious slippery slope, and something I am not taking lightly. What else should I do?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 20 Feb 2010 | 4:33 pm Oracle CEO optimistic on quick Sun profit potential
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 AutoWeek | Mercedes-Benz F800 pairs hydrogen fuel cell and plug-in hybrid USA Today Mercedes-Benz is introducing a "research vehicle," er, concept at the Geneva Motor Show next month that combines hydrogen fuel cells with plug-in hybrid. That means the F800 Style can travel for 18 miles on electric power alone after being plugged in ... Mercedes-Benz F800 Style Concept - Auto Shows Geneva auto show: Mercedes-Benz F800 Style set for reveal First Look: Mercedes-Benz F800 Style Concept |
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We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does! Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…
According to a Washington Post report from early this morning, the school district has admitted to remotely activating its laptops' webcams forty-two times over the last 2 years. Now the FBI is involved, determining if the school district violated any wiretapping or computer-privacy laws in the process.
The school district maintains that the webcams were only accessed in efforts to retrieve stolen or lost laptops, but this whole mess stems from the punishment of a student in which a webcam shot, snapped while the student was in his home, was cited as evidence of wrongdoing. The extent to which the school abused its ability to access the webcams isn't quite clear at this point, but the original incident makes the school's defense about using them strictly as a security measure pretty hard to believe. [Washington Post]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Over the last few days we’ve been tracking Apple’s recent decision to remove all sexual content from the App Store. It’s an alarming move on Apple’s part, if only because it shows that the company is willing to throw developers (and their livelihoods) under the bus without any notice at all. Now developers are left wondering: just what exactly is allowed on the App Store? As it turns out, the new policy may be even more restrictive than it first appeared.
Earlier this week, when Apple notified developers that their applications were being removed, it said that it was removing applications with “overtly sexual content”. That sounds like the ban only extends to apps that are little more than soft core porn. But we’re hearing from multiple developers that it actually means anything that could be even the slightest bit titillating in any way — including swimsuits and fitness outfits. In short, if your app has skin, it will probably be rejected.
One developer, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke to multiple App Store reviewers about the new policy. He was told, “there will be no more applications that are for any purpose of excitement or titillation”. He was told this included swimsuits — both bikinis and one-piece suits. Along with having dozens of his “sexy” apps removed, Apple also removed one that featured a popular fitness model in her workout clothes (the app was a marketing vehicle for the athlete’s line of protein powder). When he asked if the ban would also affect apps like Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit application, the Apple employee wouldn’t give a clear answer, but it was implied that the SI app would probably be removed as well.
Developer Jon Atherton, who is behind the popular application Wobble (which doesn’t actually include any sexual photos), also spoke to an Apple employee, and posted this list of rules to his blog based on what he learned:
1. No images of women in bikinis (Ice skating tights are not OK either)
2. No images of men in bikinis! (I didn’t ask about Ice Skating tights for men)
3. No skin (he seriously said this) (I asked if a Burqa was OK, and the Apple guy got angry)
4. No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs (yes – I am serious, we have to remove the silhouette in this pic)
5. No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex – all banned
6. Nothing that can be sexually arousing!! (I doubt many people could get aroused with the pic above but those puritanical guys at Apple must get off on pretty mundane things to find Wobble “overtly sexual!)
7. No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content (not sure how Playboy is still in the store, but …)
As far as we can tell, Apple hasn’t spelled out its new policies anywhere (our request for more details has gone unanswered). Keep in mind that these rules may not be set in stone — Apple is purposely vague about its policies, and they’re probably still changing.
These moves are pretty ridiculous given the fact that the iPhone offers a full set of parental controls — Apple should have just blocked the applications from view of anyone who wasn’t old enough to see them. But the real issue with all this, as I outlined yesterday, is how callous Apple is being with regard to the well-being of iPhone developers. It’s easy to paint anyone behind a “sexy” iPhone app as a scumbag, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of young men have iPhones, and they’re willing to pay a few dollars for sexy photos — it’s business. There are magazine empires that are built around this very principle.
The developer who I spoke to says that he’s spent the last year regularly speaking to Apple representatives, attempting to tweak his “sexy” apps to accommodate Apple’s constantly evolving standards. He was told things like (paraphrased) “a woman can be pictured in a bathing suit, but she can’t have her thumb on the suit’s strings” — because that would have been too sexually suggestive. He’d make the modifications and resubmit, oftentimes only to have another photo get called out for an equally bizarre reason. During these back-and-forths he was told that things would get better when the iPhone’s parental controls came out. And that was true for a little while, until Apple changed its mind.
After making around $30,000 last year from the App Store, he’s essentially lost his income. And Wobble’s company, which was pulling in around $500 a day, is now making less than $10. Apple gave these developers the green light to build “sexy” apps, and now that they’ve built businesses around them, it’s tossing them aside without so much as an apology. To Apple, they’re expendable.
The last batch of Samsung point-and-shoots was so unremarkable that I couldn’t even bear to write them up. Not so this batch — while Samsung isn’t exactly revolutionizing imaging or anything, these are at least different from the usual “megapixel bump and smile shutter features” nonsense.
Following the example of such cameras as the DP2 and LX3, the new TL500 eschews high megapixel counts and long zooms for a fast lens and larger sensor, resulting in (one hopes) much-improved low light performance. And the TL350 takes a page from Casio’s book (it’s about time) and allows for 1000FPS video recording (in a postage stamp-sized frame, of course). Bravo, Samsung.
Here are the relevant stats and figures:
The selling point of the TL500 is its lens and sensor. Its 1.7″ CCD and F/1.8 24mm lens (5x optical zoom) mean that the camera should be able to shoot at its optimum settings in almost any situation. No more high-ISO pictures at sunset or blurred action in daylight because of a slow lens — this has ever been the curse of point and shoots.
Unfortunately, the result of this helpful, but immature lens-sensor combination is a lack of other compelling features. Video, for instance, is limited to a pathetic 640×480 at 30FPS. While I rarely find a use for face recognition and such, it’s become part of a standard feature set that people expect, and the TL500 doesn’t seem to sport any of the usual bells and whistles. Maybe it’s for the best. But really, VGA video? And brother is that camera ugly!
It’s also got a 3″ AMOLED swivel screen, which I imagine is quite nice. The TL500 should be available this spring for $450. Kind of steep if you ask me, but I like where they’re going with this.
The TL350 is the most interesting camera I’ve seen from Samsung in a long time, probably because it’s a mea culpa on their part, admitting that perhaps consumers do want interesting features. The TL350 doesn’t have the same high-quality lens or big sensor as the TL500, but its feature set is much more compelling. To start with, it does high speed video — up to 1000FPS, like the Casio FC100, and actually uses the same framerate steps as Casio does, with slightly higher resolution. We’ll have to test this out first-hand to see if it’s better or worse, but the fact that they’re even doing it raises my opinion of Samsung significantly.
Next, they have an interesting but questionably practical feature, called dual capture. Basically, you can take full-size 10-megapixel shots while shooting HD video at 1080p. I don’t know how many shots I’ve missed because I was busy shooting video, but it isn’t many. Also, I’d be worried about shutter lag, weird exposure, and interruption of the video. But hey, maybe they’ve got that all worked out.
The TL350 also has a 3″ AMOLED screen, though it doesn’t swivel. I’m okay with that if you are. It should be available this spring for $350. This is the one I’d buy if I were you. Hopefully we’ll get one for review right quick.
Not too much too see here. The AQ100 (top) is waterproof, and the SL605 is “durable,” which is not to say “rugged.” The both have 12 megapixels, a 5x zoom, a 2.7″ LCD screen, and the usual point-and-shoot features. The AQ100 shoots 720p but the SL605 is limited to 640×480. The obvious question is why didn’t they just make one camera that’s both durable and waterproof?
They’ll both be available this spring, the AQ100 for $200 and the SL605 for $130.
Apparently at the end of the work day on Friday, supervisors at the Foxconn factory in Juarez, Mexico weren't quite ready to wrap up for the weekend, so they told the workers that the transportation trucks that take them home everyday were being held up at a military checkpoint. In the meantime, the workers were forced to keep toiling away without any extra compensation.
Well, that bit about the military checkpoint wasn't entirely true, and when the workers found out that the trucks were just being blocked-in in the parking lot, they expressed their anger by setting fire to the gymnasium, the area of the building in which the factory's finished computers and cell phones are stored.
This reportedly isn't the first time the slimy managers at the Juarez plant had tried to strong arm their employees into staying overtime without extra pay, so the explosive reaction is not entirely surprising. Sometimes you just gotta fight fire with arson. [El Norte (sub. required) - Thanks Wilibaldo]
 PhysOrg.com | Why Apple's Porn Purge is a Smart Move PC World It appears Apple is embarking on a new anti-smut crusade to rid its iPhone App Store of "overtly sexual content." According to news reports, the targets of Apple's ire include relatively tame adult fare, many of which manage to incorporate the word ... Apple Removes Some Adult Apps Poll: Should Apple ban adult-themed apps from the App Store? Apple May Be Purging Sexy Apps |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The decision to close your Google account has to be carefully considered—after all, this is the place that stores your email, your documents, your contacts, your photos, your news, and even your health records. But this level of investment to one service is as good a reason to leave as it is to stay: If looking at your Google Dashboard, which lists all the services you use, and the amount and type of information you store on them, doesn't make you feel a little uneasy, then hell, what would?
Anyway, I'm not here to make the case for you to drop Google altogether—it's not something I'm prepared to do, for a start—I'm just here to tell you how to do it. Here's everything you need to know about life after Google.
It's easy to forget that there are other search engines in the world, because Google has been so plainly dominant over the last few years. But they're there, and they're actually pretty good.
The best alternative to Google, by a long shot, is Microsoft's Bing. It's an evolution of the Live search engine, and it's offers a distinctly different experience than Google: it's far from minimalist, with a colorful interface, content-tailored results pages, and and emphasis on reducing clicks, rather than reducing clutter. Coming from Google it can be visually jarring, and the fact that the results for common searches are different—if not better or worse—means that at first, you'll get the feeling that it isn't working right.
Give it some time and some patience, and you'll realize that it's pretty damn good. And even if search isn't perceived as the biggest threat to your privacy, it's important to make the switch anyway—after all, it was Google search that was the gateway to all the other Google services, which you're now trying untangle yourself from.
Honorable Mentions:
• Yahoo
• Wolfram Alpha
• Collecta
• Mahalo
Back when it launched in 2005, Gmail lured users with insane amounts of free storage space: One gigabyte. Impossible. This caught the dominant services of the day completely off guard, and made their free webmail seem utterly ancient.
Today, that one gigabyte has grown to nearly seven, and on the surface not much has changed about ol' Gmail. Meanwhile, the companies that were blindsided back in 2005 have had plenty of time to catch up to, and in some cases, exceed Google's offering. Here's how to make the full switch:
Backing up your Gmail: There are a number of ways to do this, but one stands out as the easiest: The email client method.
1.) Download Thunderbird, a free email client from the same people who make Firefox (Download for Windows, OS X)
2.) Enable IMAP access on your Gmail account, by clicking the Setting link in the top right of your inbox, navigating to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab, and selecting the "Enable IMAP" radio button
3.) File > New Mail Account
4.) Enter your name and Gmail address, after which Thunderbird should find your mail settings automatically, and set itself up as an IMAP client: 
(If this doesn't happen, consult Google's guide for a manual setup.
5.) Once the account is set up, open Thunderbird's Account Settings panel, and navigate to the Synchronization and Storage tab. Make sure "Keep messages for this account on this computer" and "Synchronize all messages regardless of age" are both selected.
6.) Wait for your messages to sync to your computer—this could take hours, especially if you're near your Gmail storage limit.
What you've done here is imported all of your Gmail messages into a local client—Thunderbird—which lets you browse them, search them, or back them up to an external hard drive for posterity. And if you switch to another IMAP-based service, you can import these old messages into your new account simply by dragging them from your Gmail inbox folder in Thunderbird to your new account's inbox folder.
Contacts are a trickier question, but at the very least you can use Gmail's contact exporting tool (under your Gmail inbox folder list) to create a CSV file or or VCard, for importing into a client like Thunderbird.
The best alternative service: As long as it's been since Gmail showed up on the scene, the webmail scene hasn't seen many exciting new players—Google has a knack of preempting new competition when it moves into a product category. So, for the best remaining alternative is a veritable oldie: Yahoo mail. Consider the facts:
• It's still free
• It offers unlimited storage
• POP access is available in the free version, and with a little fiddling, so is IMAP access
• Free text messages in certain countries
• The interface doesn't look like it was designed in 1999, like certain other webmail clients.
The matter of Buzz: Now, when you ditch Gmail, you'll also be losing Google Buzz, which is a sort of location-aware status update system that nobody has really had the time to get into yet. Don't worry: Buzz was a response to other services, not a trailblazer, so you'll be served just fine sticking with Twitter (which lets you update you status with geolocation), FourSquare (which lets you alert your friends as to which particular establishments you visit, and see what other people think of said establishments), and Facebook (for posting media and accepting comments on it). Buzz didn't have time to become vital, so switching away from it should be easy.
Exporting your Google calendars: This one's easy. Just:
1.) Navigate to your GCal settings page, and click on the Calendars tag.
2.) Export calendars to an ICS file, like so: 
3.) That's it!
The best alternative: Yahoo calendar is fine, but in the spirit of spreading your vital info around, let's go with Windows Live Calendar. One you've created a Live ID—you pretty much need one of these nowadays—you're automatically given a Live Calendar account. To import your Google Calendars, just do the following:
1.) Open Live Calendar
2.) Click "Subscribe"
3.) Import the ICS file you exported from Gmail, like this:
Not that many people use Picasa, so this one should be easy. Plus, there are some obviously superior alternatives.
• Flickr doesn't stop at being a great photo sharing site, it's also an amazing resource for photographers, both expert and amateur. Storage is limited with a monthly upload cap.
• Photobucket is a simple gallery service, with an emphasis on sharing over archiving. Storage is limited to 1GB.
• Shutterfly is another super-simple service, with unlimited storage (Google doesn't even offer that for free)
• Facebook shouldn't be counted out—its photo compression may be aggressive, but it does allow you to upload and tag a virtually unlimited number of photos.
A lot of people find themselves using Google Docs because it's just so damn convenient—you receive a document in your Gmail account, and suddenly, hey, it's in the Google Docs service! That's how they get you. And interestingly enough, despite Google's acquisition of Writely and subsequent improvements on in the Docs service, there's still an objectively superior online document editing service out there.
ZoHo Docs is a full online office suit (among other things) which does virtually everything Google Docs can do, and often more. It offers deep document editing, offline editing (!), and collaborative editing. Document compatibility on ZoHo is absolutely tops, and the formatting and editing options far exceed Google Docs. There's a text editor, a spreadsheet editor and a presentation editor, to name a few.
So, you've migrated what you can, and settled into you new services nicely. Now, it's time to close your Google account out, once and for all? Are you ready? Are you sure? Ok.
For any grievances you may have about Google's privacy practices, you have to give them credit for making the process stupidly easy.
1.) From any Google page, click the Settings link in the top right, then Account Settings from the submenu.
2.) Next to "My Products", click the "Edit" link
3.) From here, choose to delete individual services, or close your Google Account altogether.
4.) Confirm that you want all of your data deleted.
5.) DO IT.
Feels strange, doesn't it? For anyone with enough spite and motivation to follow this guide, though, I suspect "strange" could be replaced with any number of more gracious adjectives. So, ex-Googlers: Do you feel better now?
We couldn't cover ever last Google service and piece of software, so if you have more tips and alternatives to share, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides. And if you have any topics you'd like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy diversifying, folks!
AP - A suburban Philadelphia school district accused of secretly switching on laptop computer webcams inside students' homes says it never used webcam images to monitor or discipline students and believes one of its administrators has been "unfairly portrayed and unjustly attacked."
In November of last year, Gowalla finally extended its reach beyond its iPhone app with a version of its app that worked on the mobile web for Android (and the iPhone’s Safari browser). It was a pretty good web app but had some limitations, which founder Josh Williams accepted because his team was at work on a native app for Android as well. That wait is over.
While it’s not yet in the Android Market, Gowalla has released a very early beta version of the native Android app to its most dedicated users that patrol the company’s Get Satisfaction page. Williams posted about the new app a few days ago, and noted that “Technically, we are calling this beta release 0.1. We will release a more fully featured beta to the Marketplace before the end of the month.” Since it’s not in the Market yet, you can only get the app by visiting this static link — or by using your Android camera to scan one of the bar codes you can find in that Get Satisfaction thread.
Note: To install the app, you have to have your device set up for the installation of “non-Market applications”. This site runs through how to do that, but basically you go to Menu -> Settings -> Applications, then check the “Unknown sources” checkbox.
So how is the app compared to its iPhone brother? Well, surprisingly, in some ways I think it might already be better. While, as Williams, notes, it is currently missing the Trips feature, and it’s not doing any image caching, the 0.1 build of Gowalla for Android is slick and lightweight. As you’ll notice right away, the app has a distinctly different look because it has ditched the iPhone’s green hues for a cleaner, white look. I can’t tell you how many Gowalla users I’ve talked to that hate the green look of the iPhone app and would like a way to change it (I’m included in that list).
More importantly, the Android version of Gowalla flips the features of the service so that your friend check-in stream is now the first tab. This makes the Android version more social right off the bat than the iPhone version, which buries that information in the last tab.
Gowalla’s Android launch is timely as the SXSW conference is less than a month away. Last year, both Gowalla and rival Foursquare launched their iPhone apps at the conference, with Foursquare able to take an early lead over the past year. Foursquare now has apps for all the major mobile OSes except for Symbiam. Meanwhile, Gowalla is also close to launching a BlackBerry app. Game on.
Check out some early screenshots below.
[thanks Wes]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Gadgets / Other, Green, Web, Google
Google is notoriously known for owning just about everything about anyone (searches, email, documents, instant messenger, etc.), but they are not even close to feeling satisfied.
Google no doubt has its hand in more than just personal data on all of its servers, however, energy has always been an interest. In fact they have an entire section of their website dedicated to displaying their work in make the world just a little bit greener.
If you visit their site, you will notice that Google has been making little steps to making both their servers more efficient to making plug-in hybrid cars. In fact, in 2007, Google released RE<C
However impressive and satisfying this must be for the eco-friendly Google user, Google has its sights set higher. Rather than being happy with their company’s reduced carbon footprint, Google has decided to try selling the energy. Having already applied and been granted the authority to “buy and sell energy in bulk…” by The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission(FERC).
This does not necessarily mean consumers will soon be able to power their house with “Google Power.” But instead, allows Google to better manage their own energy consumption.
In October, we swore that the Canon Powershot S90 would never leave our pockets. But we might be willing to empty them out for Samsung's TL500.
The TL500 packs a 1/1.7" CCD sensor—the same size as the S90's—and has a 24mm Schneider f/1.8 lens which makes for faaaast shooting and wiiiiide angles, with 3x optical zoom. The TL500 smartly scales back on the megapixels for better low-light performance, packing 10 as opposed to the 14MP offered by their recently announced CL80.
The TL500 shoots RAW and offers the garden variety of shooting modes including full manual control, and it has Samsung's Smart Auto 2.0 and Dual Image Stabiliziation tech for recognizing surroundings and keeping them sharp in your photos.
Sweetening the deal, the TL500 has a swiveling 3.0" AMOLED screen, so you will be able to see your shot no matter what crazy position you find yourself in.
But—and there's always a "but," isn't there—the camera only shoots 640x480 video, and with a steep pricetag of $449, we would've liked to see 720p capability.
Nevertheless, Samsung has been steadily improving their camera offerings, and with the TL500 they might have created their masterpiece. You can be sure that we are going to get our hands on one as soon as possible to see if that's the case. It'll hit shelves sometime this spring.
SAMSUNG LAUNCHES THE TL500 - A HIGH-END COMPACT WITH AN ULTRA WIDE AND BRIGHT F/1.8 LENS
Fast Operating Speed and Ultra-Sensitive 1/1.7" CCD Will Impress Enthusiast Photographers
Anaheim, CA (February 20, 2010) - Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a market leader and award-winning innovator in consumer electronics, proudly introduces the 10 mega-pixel TL500, a high-end compact digital camera designed specifically for today's advanced and enthusiast photographers. The new flagship of the company's compact digital camera family, the new TL500 incorporates a full-range of advanced features, including a high-performance imaging sensor and one of the brightest lenses ever featured on a compact camera – a 24mm ultra wide angle Schneider KREUZNACH, f/1.8. The TL500 will be on display during PMA 2010, February 21 23, in the Samsung booth, #2227, in the Anaheim Convention Center.
"With the TL500, Samsung further differentiates its lineup from the competition and achieves yet another milestone in the industry," said Mr. SJ Park, CEO of Samsung Digital Imaging Company. "With ultra-wide angle capability and unparalleled speed, the TL500's lens offers a new level of versatility allowing the user to be more creative and take better pictures."High-Quality Optics and Images
The Samsung TL500 is sure to turn heads thanks to its ultra-wide, f/1.8 Schneider lens – one of the brightest ever featured on a compact digital camera. The impressive f/1.8 lens offers photographers a wider range of aperture steps and shallow depth-of-field, giving them the ability to blur out the background of their images while maintaining focus on their subjects. The ultra-fast, f/1.8 lens also allows users to take better photos in low-light environments as more light is passed through to the new high-performance 1/1.7" CCD sensor. Larger than the sensors typically found in compact digital cameras, the TL500's 1/1.7" CCD offers unrivaled sensitivity (max ISO 3200/full-resolution). Together with Samsung's re engineered and fast, DRIMeIII imaging processor, the TL500 captures high-quality images, regardless of the lighting environment.
The high-end Schneider lens offers a 24mm, ultra-wide focal length and 3x optical zoom. Much wider than traditional compact cameras, the TL500's 24mm ultra-wide angle lens allows photographers to capture more of a desired scene, such as beautiful landscapes and large groups of friends or family. For blur free images, the TL500's lens is also paired with Samsung's Dual Image Stabilization technology.Versatile Display Enhances the Viewing Experience
Composing and reviewing images on the TL500's three-inch, swiveling AMOLED screen is a pleasure. The rotating AMOLED display will allow photographers to precisely frame their images the way they want and shoot from just about any angle, including overhead or low to the-ground shots. Compared to the traditional TFT-LCD found on most digital cameras, the TL500's AMOLED provides users with a higher contrast ratio, deeper blacks and more accurate, vivid colors, even when viewed from an angle or in direct sunlight. The TL500's AMOLED display is also more efficient when it comes to power consumption, allowing photographers to maximize battery life and shoot longer on a single charge.Multiple Shooting Options
The TL500 supports RAW and gives enthusiasts full control over their images thanks to its shutter priority, aperture priority and full Manual shooting modes. When using these settings, shooters can experiment with features such as slower shutter speeds and depth of field; however, for those who prefer ease-of-use over manual controls, the TL500 also offers Samsung's Smart Auto 2.0 (Still & Movie) scene recognition technology. Applicable for video recording (640x480 / 30fps / H.264) and taking digital stills, this intelligent feature analyzes the scene and then automatically selects the appropriate settings for the best results possible. Using this mode requires minimal effort and does not sacrifice image quality for simple operation.Specifications
TL500
Mega-Pixels 10 mega-pixels
Optical Zoom 3x optical zoom / ultra-wide 24mm
LCD Size 3.0" swiveling AMOLED
Lens Schneider KREUZNACH
Ultra-Bright f/1.8 lens
Movie Mode 640x480 @30fps / H.264
Size 114.3mmx63.2mmx29.2mm
Special Features - Ultra- Bright f/1.8 lens
- 24mm Ultra-Wide-Angle Lens
- 3.0" Swiveling AMOLED
- Dual Image Stabilization (Optical + Digital)
- Manual Controls: A/S/M
- RAW support
- Smart Auto 2.0 (Still & Movie)
- Large 1/1.7 inch, high sensitivity CCD
- Front Wheel Control
Availability Spring 2010
Pricing $449.99
* Specifications are subject to change without notice.Samsung Electronics America's PMA 2010 press releases, video content and product images are available at www.samsung.com/newsroom.
The TL350 sports a 10MP CMOS sensor and a 24mm Schneider lens capable of 5x optical zoom. It shoots RAW and has full manual controls, so seasoned photographers can get down and dirty.
Onto the good stuff: it's one of the first non-superzoom point-and-shoots capable of shooting full-HD, 1080p video. We don't know how it'll actually look, but that's a big deal. Even more bonkers is its new Dual Capture function that lets you snap 10MP stills while you're shooting video, without having to switch modes. That's hot. When you're not doubling up, it has a burst mode in which you can shoot up to 10 full size shots per second.
It's also capable of shooting high-speed video, all speeds of up to 1000 fps, though we'll have to wait and see how it stacks up against the Casio EX-FH100, the forthcoming update to the reigning high-speed point-and-shoot champ. In any event, shooting at 1000fps crams the video down to a teeny 138x78 resolution.
Shooting 1080p video would be enough to grab our attention, but the high-speed video, simultaneous shooting, and RAW capabilities really make the TL350 a standout. It'll be coming down the pipeline this spring for $350.
SAMSUNG ANNOUNCES THE HIGH-SPEED TL350 WITH FULL HD VIDEO
TL350's New Dual Capture Mode Allows Users To Take 10 Mega-Pixel Stills While Simultaneously Recording Full-HD Video
Anaheim, CA (February 20, 2010) – Samsung Electronics America, Inc., a market leader and award winning innovator in consumer electronics, today unveiled the TL350 - a high-speed, 10 mega pixel compact camera with 1080P, full-HD video recording. With a maximum video recording speed of 1,000 frames-per-second (fps) and a burst mode capable of capturing 10 full-size digital stills per second, the TL350 takes high-speed imaging to a new level for today's consumer. Additionally, the TL350 enhances the digital imaging experience with Samsung's Advanced Panorama Shot with Object Tracking as well as an innovative Dual Capture mode, which allows users to simultaneously take 10 mega-pixel still images while recording full-HD videos. The TL350 will be on display during PMA 2010, February 21-23, in the Samsung booth, #2227, in the Anaheim Convention Center.
"The TL350 is representative of Samsung's strategy to lead the digital imaging industry through product innovation," said Mr. SJ Park, CEO of Samsung Digital Imaging Company. "Consumers have expressed frustration with having to choose between shooting video or taking digital stills with their camera. With the TL350, Samsung has addressed this unmet consumer need, and now gives consumers the ability to do both simultaneously."High-Speed Digital Stills and Video
The TL350 allows users to capture high-quality images no matter how fast the action may be. Its advanced CMOS sensor and re-engineered DRIMeIII processor yield impressive low light performance and most notably, speed, giving users the ability to capture up to 10 pictures-per-second (pps) at the resolution of 10 mega-pixels. Additionally, the TL350 features a 1,000 fps (138x78), high-speed video recording mode which today's creative consumer can use to reveal details of a fast moving event in super slow motion. Whether it's used to capture an everyday moment in an astonishing new light or to analyze a golf swing, the capabilities of the TL350's super-slow motion playback are endless.Impressive Optics and Display
In addition to its impressive speed, the TL350 also features a high-performance 24mm ultra wide angle Schneider KREUZNACH lens complete with a generous 5x optical zoom. Much wider than traditional compact cameras, the TL350's 24mm ultra-wide angle lens allows photographers to capture more of a desired scene, such as large groups of friends or family, while the 5x optical zoom will allow them to get in close when shooting from a distance. Samsung's Advanced Panorama shot with Object Tracking will further enhance the camera's wide-angle capabilities, ideal for the better capture of scenes such as vast landscapes. For blur free images, the TL350's lens is also paired with Samsung's Dual Image Stabilization technology.
The TL350 is equipped with a three-inch AMOLED screen providing users with a higher contrast ratio, deeper blacks and more accurate, vivid colors, even when viewed from an angle or in direct sunlight. The AMOLED display is also more efficient when it comes to power consumption, allowing photographers to maximize battery life and shoot longer on a single charge.Features for the Advanced and Novice Shooter
The TL350 will appeal to both novice and more experienced users thanks to the combination of Smart and Manual controls. The camera's intuitive Smart Auto 2.0 (Still & Movie) scene recognition technology will take the guess work out of taking a perfect photo or video every time; however, for those users who want to have more control over image capture, the TL350 supports RAW and offers Manual control. When set to Manual, consumers can experiment with features such as slower shutter speeds, depth-of-field and even focus.
Specifications:
Video Resolution / Frames-Per-Second
Aspect Ratio Speed Max. Resolution
WIDE (16:9) 30 fps 1920x1080
60 fps 1280x720
240 fps 608x342
420 fps 316x178
1000 fps 138x78
STD (4:3) 60 fps 640x480
240 fps 320x240TL350
Mega-Pixels 10.2 mega-pixels
Optical Zoom 5x optical zoom / Schneider lens
LCD Size 3.0" VGA AMOLED
Lens Schneider KREUZNACH
Movie Mode 1080P HD Resolution With HDMI Connectivity
Size 3.91 x 2.32 x 0.85 inches
Special Features - 24mm Ultra-Wide-Angle Schneider Lens
- 5x Optical Zoom
- 3.0" VGA AMOLED (614K dots)
- Full-size Dual Capture Feature
- Advanced Panorama Shot with Object Tracking
- High speed CMOS sensor
- 10fps continuous still shot at 10M pixel
- High-Definition 1080p Video With HDMI Connectivity
- High speed Movie recording at up to 1,000fps
- Dual Image Stabilization (Optical + Digital)
- RAW Support
- Full Manual Control
- Advanced Picture Mode (manually adjust color tones)
- Smart Auto 2.0: Still & Movie
- Smart Album
- Smart Face Recognition (up to 20 faces)
- Perfect Portrait System: Beauty Shot / Face Detection / Self Portrait / Smile Shot / Blink Detection/Red-eye Fix
- Photo Style Selector
- Built-in software for playback, management, and editing on a PC (no CD-Rom installation required)
Availability Spring 2010
Pricing $349.99
* Specifications are subject to change without notice.
Samsung Electronics America's PMA 2010 press releases, video content and product images are available at www.samsung.com/newsroom.
While digging through the Chromium forums back in November looking for clues about the then-unreleased Chrome for Mac beta, we stumbled on an interesting bit of information: Google was moving away from supporting Gears going forward. While this move was obvious for some given Google’s heavy investment in HTML5, Google hadn’t talked much about what would happen to their plug-in that allowed for things such as offline access to Gmail. They’re talking now.
In a post yesterday on the Gears API blog, Ian Fette from the Gears team comes right out and says it in his title: “Hello HTML5.” Fette notes that the reason there haven’t been many updates to Gears in the past several months is because the team has shifted its focus towards implementing the same features into Chrome through HTML5. So far, this includes Database API, workers, local storage, and web sockets. And soon, LocalServer API and Geolocation will be a part of Chrome as well, Fette notes. In essence, all of these features make Gears unnecessary — well, at least in Chrome, which Google obviously wants you to use.
Because of this shift of focus, Fette notes that support for Gears will be increasingly “constrained in scope.” What this means is that beginning immediately, they will no longer be supporting Gears on OS X Snow Leopard (and later). Meanwhile, Gears support in Firefox and Internet Explorer will continue in limited form for now. But both of those too will eventually be killed off. “We will not be investing resources in active development of new features,” Fette writes.
Really, all Google is waiting for is an effective way to migrate Gears-enabled apps (and their users) over to HTML5. While there is currently no good way to do this, it seems as if Google just may wait for developers to drink the HTML5 kool-aid and then kill of Gears support entirely — even if there are still some who are using it.
I’m all for this. As I wrote back in December, I’m of the opinion that plug-ins are perhaps the biggest inhibitor of a unified web. That is, a web where everyone sees the same content the same way, no matter what browser or which OS they’re using. It doesn’t matter if those plug-ins are made by Google (Gears), Microsoft (Silverlight), Adobe (Flash), or anyone else.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Globe and Mail | School district: Spy Webcams activated 42 times CNET When one hears the word "spy," one normally thinks of places like Moscow, London, and Washington rather than Rosemont, Pa. However, the controversy swirling around Rosemont's Harriton High School and the Lower Merion School District ... FBI investigates allegations webcam used to monitor student Lower Merion School District: A case against school-owned laptops School Officials Likened to "Peeping Toms" |
 Times Online | Privacy, complexity seen as Google blind spots San Francisco Chronicle The recent privacy backlash over Google Buzz, the company's new social-networking service, is the latest in a series of launch fumbles that some argue reveal troubling blind spots within the Internet giant. The huge amount of cash generated by the ... Google Remorse and the Buzz Privacy Backlash Google Says Buzz Needed Wider Testing, Issuing Fixes This Week ... Google's Buzz overstepped on privacy |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
FROM APPLETELL - Apple has declared war on sex. Makers of apps that feature sexual content (that is to say, revealing but not nude) have gotten notifications that their apps are being removed from the App store.
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Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
It’s the start of yet another lazy Saturday, so let’s make things a little more interesting with a side dish of outrage. A 15-year-old student in Pennsylvania has accused his high school of spying on him using a school-supplied MacBook. The school had accused the boy “inappropriate behavior” that it found him engaged in via the built-in Webcam. Lawsuits are flying, as you might imagine.
The school didn’t say what activity the boy was engaged in, and it doesn’t really matter. He could have been gacked out of his mind, but the school has no right to spy on him in his own home. If you think it does, then let’s get you a time machine so you can live under the thumb of the Stasi.
The school-issued MacBook has a sort of security feature that allows an administrator to remotely activate the built-in Webcam without the user knowing. It’s ostensibly a security feature, but, should the boy’s allegations pan out, then I think we can say the school acted way out of bounds.
Now, the MacBook is 100 percent owned by the school, so it’s well within its rights to set the rules. “No Torrents, no LimeWire, no YouTube,” etc. (Who uses LimeWire, by the way? It’s always in the top 10 downloads of the likes of versiontracker and whatnot.) The school also reserved the right to search the MacBook’s hard drive, so if it found a whole bunch of DVD rips on there, well, that’s not allowed.
Remotely activating the Webcam to snap photos without the student knowing? That’s clearly an egregious violation of all sorts of privacy rights, and may well be on the wrong side of wiretapping laws, too. So it’s nonsense left, right, and center.
Not that emotions should have any place in deciding matters of law, but imagine your child, or you yourself if you’re a student, coming home and finding out that that laptop your school have him was spying on him. You’d be pretty ticked off, I imagine.
The school has denied any wrongdoing, and has since disabled that remote control feature.
My initial reaction was, what a wealthy school district, buying MacBooks for its kids! Surely a less expensive netbook is all a high school student would need?
AFP - No matter which captivating film wins the Oscar for visual effects at next month's Academy Awards ceremony, software savants at Autodesk will be taking a bow.
Not a big deal but I just wanted to write a bit about replacing parts on your valuable and delicate electronics. Friends, I’m here to tell you that while it’s hard, it’s not impossible to fix things yourself.
Our old DS, the one my son uses, fell in an airport a few weeks ago and the hinge cracked. I decided to try to repair the case. A quick perusal of eBay found a bright blue replacement case for the DS for 2 cents (plus $12 shipping LOL!). A search for “DS replacement case” or something like that will bring up similar models. When it arrived I put the whole mess away for a while. They all come from the same knock-off Shenzhen factory anyway. Heck, this even came with a “real” Nintendo sticker with serial number.
I cracked the thing open and slowly worked through all of the screws and parts. I’m not that handy. I like electronics but I don’t like them when they’re in pieces. My buddy Paul is great at taking things apart while our own Doug Aamoth is a whiz at PC repair. I’m just a dilettante.
Anyway, a few hours later and I have a brand new DS. Most of the parts didn’t quite fit at first – I trimmed them with a pocket knife – and the stickers are a joke but it’s a good feeling to fix something that broke. I remember repairing cars with my Dad when I was a kid and since we don’t have a garage here where we can really tear down brakes or change oil, I expect to do little projects like this with my son over the next few years. Hopefully complexity doesn’t prohibit us from this sort of thing.
In August 2009, home haircutting system maker Flowbee filed suit against Google in federal district court in Corpus Christi, Texas. The company was the umpteenth to take the Mountain View company to court for selling sponsored search ads to competitors under its trademarked keyword, which it alleged ‘confused’ customers.
On the 18th of February 2010, Google filed its answer to the complaints and simultaneously moved to file a counterclaim against the haircutting system vendor (documents here).
In the most recent filing for the case, Google denies most of the allegations Flowbee had brought forward, including that it has made any unlawful use of Flowbee’s alleged trademarks and similar marks.
At the same time, the company admits that it allows third parties to bid on keywords that may trigger display of their advertisements as Sponsored Links.
Google also filed a counterclaim against Flowbee for breach of contract. The search giant says that by filing the instant action in Texas, Flowbee breached the mandatory venue selection provision (federal or state courts of Santa Clara County, California) of the AdWords contract it had entered with Google. The Mountain View company is seeking damages for the money and resources that were spent trying to transfer the action to the ‘proper’ venue.
And then there are a couple of nuggets in the whole thing that are quite amusing (if you’re anything like me, that is).
For example: Flowbee in its suit filing documents attempts to define “The Internet and the World Wide Web” and mentions that people can visit Web pages using browser programs like Macintosh Safari or Microsoft Internet Explorer. In its answer, Google subtly points out that while it does not dispute the description of the Internet is essentially accurate, it denies knowledge of a “Macintosh Safari” browser program (it’s simply called Safari).
Also funny: Eric Goldman, Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law and well-known blogger, at the time Flowbee filed suit noted that a lot of the language in the documents was seemingly lifted from another lawsuit that was filed earlier by American Airlines against Yahoo and Google, covering similar grounds.
But reading Google’s answer, I stumbled on the company name ‘Rosetta Stone’ a number of times, and I wondered if Google’s attorneys had also copied most of the language from another suit and forgot to replace the company name Flowbee by Rosetta Stone here and there. Sure enough, the language education software maker sued Google a month before Flowbee did, equally claiming that the AdWords program infringes its trademark.
And you thought sifting through court documents is always a boring way to spend a slow Saturday afternoon!
Paramodel "tommy sushi" & "tommy ca". (Thanks, Francesco!)The series of sculptures featured on AZITO show the perfect merger discovered between TOMY toy cars, plastic food models used by restaurants, and the dishes accompanying those cuisines. Four carry enticing plastic sushi models, while another four carry Chinese food models. Strapped down to the toy cars, the plastic foods are readily docked onto the very dishes which would be used in their consumption. Yet, the cars cannot budge from the perimeter of the dish; the food cannot be consumed; and the viewer recognizes the paradox in having the exact collection of items needed for transporting food onto the table and into our mouths - and yet, not being able to perform either function. Enticing us with our own desires of play, eating, and mimicry, and then turning such impulses into plastic model visions, these eight sculptures beautifully capture the spirit of "Paramodel".
So UVEX turned to verse:
Theoretically, a trademark claim is partly about protecting a company's name from "tarnishment," but it's hard to imagine how one could tarnish the IOC's reputation any further, between the naked greed, the unchecked bullying, the corruption and bribery, the doping, and the censorship. Oh, and the thousands of poor people inevitably evicted whenever the Olympics come to town. Is there any way the IOC's reputation could sink lower?Blonde Who Uses Our Stuff Wins Downhill (Last Name Rhymes With "Bonn")
There once was a lawyer from the IOC,
who called us to protect "intellectual property.""During the Olympics", she said with a sneer
"your site can't use an Olympian's name even if they use your gear.""No pictures, no video, no blog posts can be used..."
Even if they are old? "No!", she enthused.While Olympians chase gold the IOC pursues green.
Cough up millions, or your logo cannot be seen . . .
Blonde we like wins Downhill (Last name rhymes with "Bonn") (Thanks, Barry!)
Reading this piece, you get the sense that the reporters struggled to winnow down the list of horrific abuses to fit the space -- the litany of absolutely nightmarish judicial behavior goes on and on and on and on.
In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and PowerAnd several people in the small town of Dannemora were intimidated by their longtime justice, Thomas R. Buckley, a phone-company repairman who cursed at defendants and jailed them without bail or a trial, state disciplinary officials found. Feuding with a neighbor over her dog's running loose, he threatened to jail her and ordered the dog killed...
In the Catskills, Stanley Yusko routinely jailed people awaiting trial for longer than the law allows -- in one case for 64 days because he thought the defendant had information about vandalism at the justice's own home, said state officials, who removed him as Coxsackie village justice in 1995. Mr. Yusko was not even supposed to be a justice; he had actually failed the true-or-false test...
In Mount Kisco, people who asked for the court's sympathy were treated to sarcasm: Justice Joseph J. Cerbone would pull out a nine-inch violin and threaten to play. Mr. Cerbone phoned one woman and talked her out of pressing abuse charges against the son of former clients, state records show. But it took eight years, and evidence that he had taken money from an escrow account, before the State Court of Appeals removed him in 2004 after a quarter-century in office.
The commission twice disciplined the town justice, Paul F. Bender of Marion, for deriding women in abuse cases. Arraigning one man on assault charges, he asked the police investigator whether the case was "just a Saturday night brawl where he smacks her and she wants him back in the morning..."
In 11 years as justice in Dannemora, in the North Country, Thomas R. Buckley had his own special treatment for defendants without much money: Even if they were found not guilty, he ordered them to perform community service work to pay for their court-appointed lawyers, although defense lawyers and the district attorney had reminded him for years that the law guaranteed a lawyer at no cost.
"The only unconstitutional part," he told the commission before it removed him in 2000, "is for these freeloaders to expect a free ride."
Update: Here's a recent update on the situation. In summary: nothing's changed (thanks, Salugod!)
Section: Web, Web Browsers
Google is saying “Hello, HTML5” and goodbye, Google Gears. In a message posted on the Gears API Blog, Gears Team member Ian Fette explained why development has been slow:
“If you’ve wondered why there haven’t been many Gears releases or posts on the Gears blog lately, it’s because we’ve shifted our effort towards bringing all of the Gears capabilities into web standards like HTML5.”
Google has opted to focus on HTML5, which promises to offer many of the same online-to-offline functions for web apps currently available in Gears. It’s not yet easy to convert a Gears app to an HTML5 app, but Gears will be dead in the water once that technology arrives. Google will no longer invest resources into adding new features, and it will not support Safari on OS X Snow Leopard or later. Firefox 3.6 and Internet Explorer will be supported for the time being.
The problem with Gears is that it parallels the innovations that are also available in HTML5. Google has been a strong advocate of HTML5 and adding new features to Gears doesn’t make sense if they can focus on adding to what they believe will become a new web standard. Browsers are increasingly adding native support for offline functions for GMail and other services, so the need for Gears is dwindling. Developers and companies who have invested time in support Google Gears won’t like hearing that work will soon be for naught. The best they can do is join the HTML5 bandwagon and hope Google can cook up a worthy conversion tool.
Read [Gears Blog]
Full Story » | Written by Andrew Kameka for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Now we're getting into the thick, juicy part. I spent Friday in a flurry of tweeting and note-taking, bopping from one two-hour symposium to another. I was really pleased with myself for managing to pack in five different sessions—until I realized that I'd totally missed meeting Ron Howard, King of the Gingers, at a presentation on science and Hollywood. Whoops. Thanks to my science journalism colleagues, though, I am able to tell you this: Nobody ever worked out the physics behind turning a jukebox on just by hitting it.
Those disappointments aside, the day was chock full of fascinating facts. After the jump, I'll tell you about the science of superheroes, the best way to make electric cars profitable to own and why the advice many new parents get about preventing food allergies is probably wrong.
Hopeful Monsters
This session featured writers from "Heroes", the scientific advisor to "Watchmen" and a scientist studying the real-world evolution of the—relatively super—traits that turned single-celled organisms into animals, and people.
It's that last speaker, Nichole King, Ph.D., from the University of California, Berkeley, who brought up a really interesting point about the intersection between evolution and sci-fi. Evolution, as you know, is driven by random mutations in DNA, and most of those mutations have no visible impact at all. DNA changes, but nothing important happens to the overall organism.
Other changes in DNA lead to negative impacts—for instance, the mutations that lead to cancer. Finally, and luckily, some mutations are beneficial. But, King reminded me, they're very seldom only beneficial. The same innovative mutations that make an organism stronger are usually also associated with at least one biological trade-off. You may gain, but you also lose. And whether the mutation gets counted as "successful" depends a lot on how the benefits and detriments balance out.
Think about what that could mean for, say, the X-men? Should Warren Worthington III be dealing with the osteoporosis that must surely go along with his light, flight-ready bone structure?
The Real Benefit of Hooking Your Electric Car Up to the Grid
Vehicle-to-Grid is a relatively new concept. It can refer to a lot of different ideas but, generally, we're talking about enabling electric vehicles and utility companies to establish a close, personal relationship, built on two-way communication. Its theoretical potential was first studied in 1997. In 2008, researchers first hooked up an all-electric vehicle to the real, not just simulated, grid.
I'd certainly heard of the idea before today, but mostly with the idea that doing this would enable consumers to sell electricity stored in the battery back to their utility companies. Easy peasy. You know, if you overlook the fact that buying electricity from and selling electricity to the same company, for the same price, isn't going to help anybody turn a payback on their initial investment in the car.
No, the real place where vehicle-to-grid power has considerable financial potential is frequency regulation, according to researchers from the University of Delaware, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other institutions. If you're one of the companies that runs America's electrical grid system, you have to pay a lot of attention to keeping the flow of power humming along at a steady, reliable rate. In fact, you're legally obligated to have a certain amount of generator backup dedicated to ramping power production up and down, smoothing out the fluctuations in frequency.
But coal and other traditional power plants are slow moving beasties, trying to respond to what is, essentially, a zap-quick problem. Fleets of electric vehicles, plugged in and able to communicate with the electrical grid control systems, have the potential to be a better (and way more green) alternative. And, because utilities need that backup capacity—whether or not they're using it at any given moment—the price they'd pay a consumer to make an electric car part of that backup is much higher than the rate they'd pay just to buy excess power from the car's battery. Kind of the difference between a monthly membership fee at the gym, and a one-off charge to use the sauna for an hour.
So just how profitable is that. The calculations vary—and the impact is larger for fleets than individual cars—but a 2007 study done by Jasna Tomic, Ph.D., from the alternative transportation institute CALSTART, makes it appealing. Using utility rate numbers from 2003, a 250-vehicle fleet would have grossed more than $1 million in a year, and netted close to $700K.
A new perspective on childhood allergies
For years, parents have been told to put off introducing their babies to certain foods—things like milk, soy and peanuts—that tend to cause allergic reactions. The idea behind the advice was that, if you gave a baby's immune system a chance to mature before tossing a food trial at it, it might not be so likely to overreact.
But that theory is turning out to be wrong, according to a panel of European and American public health experts from organizations like the FDA and the British National Health Service Trust. There's no evidence that delaying the introduction of potentially allergenic foods does anything to reduce a child's likelihood of developing an allergy, they said. And, in fact, there's some evidence that delaying the foods may actually increase the risk of allergic reaction.
Why? Researchers can only speculate right now, but it might have to do with the fact that you can never completely eliminate environmental exposure to certain foods. Even if you stringently avoid peanuts, you might still come into contact with very, very minute amounts of the allergy-causing nut proteins. As it turns out, it's these small, rare, random exposures that are more likely to set the stage for developing a sensitivity to a particular food, rather than regular consumption.
Once they're ready to eat solids, your baby or toddler is better off being adventurous with new foods.
More to come tomorrow! Plus, over the next few weeks, I'll also be doing a few more in-depth stories, based on AAAS lectures and symposia.
Although Sweden-born streaming music startup Spotify has done well in Scandinavian countries it would appear to now have a local competitor in the shape of a new service launching in Norway.
Tech companies Aspiro and Platekompaniet have teamed up with telco Telenor to launch a music streaming service for Norwegian users. That's all fine and dandy. However, someone there needs to go to marketing 101 classes as the service is called WiMP. Yes, I can just imagine myself "WiMPing out" at my Oslo pad listening to music...
FROM GAMERTELL - Do you like toys? Do you like free stuff? Do like you food served in kid-size portions? Then you’ll love this post about some of the best video game-themed toys given (or sold) at various fast-food establishments…
MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
According to a Wall Street Journal interview with Sanjay Jha, Motorola’s Co-CEO and head of the mobile division, the company is open to working with Windows Phone 7 Series. The interview touch mostly on the Motorola’s ideas regarding sharing it’s MOTOBLUR OS Skin with it’s set top box division. Has MOTO gone nuts?
It was just a few short months ago that Motorola was reeling from the downward spiral of Windows Mobile and their stagnant RAZR line. Once king of the hill, the RAZR phone remained largely unchanged and slowly became less relevant in the market. With Android, the company was able to get a major smartphone on the Verizon network, which pumped money into marketing the device. The Moto Droid currently sits as the best Android phone on the nation’s biggest network.
Perhaps Jha has learned companies can’t sit still and be happy with success. Now that Moto has found its way back into relevancy, the company is keeping its eyes out for the next wave. Heck, Jha was quoted as saying if he had the R&D budget, he’d build his own darn mobile OS. When asked pointedly about having the Microsoft OS on Motorola phones, Jha said, “I’m open to it…I think I need diversity in our portfolio.”
From what we’ve seen of Windows Phone 7 Series, the OS looks promising. Kudos for Motorola for not pulling a RAZR move yet again.
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Google has submitted a new version of its Google Mobile App for the iPhone platform (iTunes link), and the fresh app now finally boasts built-in support for Voice Search on iPod touch devices (2G or newer).
Version 0.4.5.3281 also brings improved stability when using Voice Search on 'restrictive networks' and is also said to make Search by Voice completion detection function a bit better. Other than that, the update brings a number of bug fixes, one that fixes pasting into the search box and one that should prevent the app from crashing when you do a search for '@'.
Google has submitted a new version of its Google Mobile App for the iPhone platform (iTunes link), and the fresh app now finally boasts built-in support for Voice Search on iPod touch devices (2G or newer).
Update: we have 3 commenters saying there still is no Voice Search on their iPod touch devices to be found, even after updating. We’re looking into it.
Version 0.4.5.3281 also brings improved stability when using Voice Search on ‘restrictive networks’ and is also said to make Search by Voice completion detection function a bit better.
Other than that, the update brings a number of bug fixes, one that fixes pasting into the search box and one that should prevent the app from crashing when you do a search for ‘@’.
In case you’re keeping count: Google Voice Search hit the iPhone mid-November 2008 and landed on Android at the beginning of February 2009.
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Oh the Associated Press, our most favorite 
The news industry in trying to discover new ways to earn money as print sales and subscriptions continue to follow years-long declines. The New York Times is going back an old method of making money: charging readers for their online content.
In addition to the cameras we 
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