You have to either be following @officeformac on Twitter, or retweet @officeformac, including the hashtag #officeformac. Only two MacBook Pros (2.53Ghz 15" models) will be given away, which considering it's Microsoft, isn't nearly as generous as some absurdly-named website no-one had ever heard of, giving away 10 of the laptops last year.

It's only open to the US and Canada, and ends in two days time, at 11:59pm PST. Really, you'd be doing them a favor entering—perhaps they could claim to have six people who "love Office for Mac." [TUAW]

Weekly Poll: Why Is Apple Building a Massive, $1 Billion Data Center

Epson 2880 printer reviewed

Epson 2880 printer reviewed

Can We Lower Earth’s Thermostat?

Brightcove Announces Expansion in Europe With Major Customer Wins & Partnerships in Spain

Tata Communications and Middle Eastern Operators to Work With Tyco Telecommunications on the Strategic TGN Gulf Cable Project

Handset market rebounding in 2010: report (Reuters)

An Early Look At Halo: Reach

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The sum of everything Google's worked on—the quest to understand what you mean, not what you say—can be boiled down to this:

This is the hard-won realization from inside the Google search engine, culled from the data generated by billions of searches: a rock is a rock. It's also a stone, and it could be a boulder. Spell it "rokc" and it's still a rock. But put "little" in front of it and it's the capital of Arkansas. Which is not an ark. Unless Noah is around. "The holy grail of search is to understand what the user wants," Singhal says. "Then you are not matching words; you are actually trying to match meaning."

Oh, and by the way, you're a guinea pig every time you search for something, if you hadn't guessed as much already. Google engineer Patrick Riley tells Levy, "On most Google queries, you're actually in multiple control or experimental groups simultaneously." It lets them constantly experiment on a smaller scale—even if they're only conducting a particular experiment on .001 percent of queries, that's a lot of data.

Be sure to check out the whole piece, it's ridiculously fascinating, and borders on self-knowledge, given how much we all use Google (sorry, Bing). [Wired, Sweet graphic by Wired's Mauricio Alejo]

Windows 7 "Memory Hog" Story Takes Turn Towards the Strange [Voices]

By Peter Bright, Contributor, Ars Technica

A few days ago I wrote about the claims that Windows 7 was a memory hog, and that Windows 7 systems tended to be short on memory. The claims were made by “Craig Barth,” CTO of Devil Mountain Software, a Florida-based company that has a small utility that collects Windows performance data and sends it to DMS’s servers, where it is then collated and interpreted.

Read the rest of the post at the original site.

O'Brien: Let Us Now Cheer the Demise of the IPO [Voices]

By Chris O’Brien, Columnist, San Jose Mercury News

Maybe it’s the adrenaline rush. Maybe it’s the craving of approval. Maybe it’s greed.

Whatever the reason, Silicon Valley just can’t seem to get over its fixation with initial public offerings.

Read the rest of the post at the original site.

Why You Can’t Pry IE6 Out Of Their Cold Dead Hands [Voices]

By Esther Schindler, Contributor, IT Expert Voice

Most web developers gnash their teeth at the thought of having to support their applications under Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer 6 browser. IE6 isn’t standards-compliant, it’s insecure, and it does not play well with anything else on the web — especially the software you long to deploy. But a minority of companies still use IE6, to developers’ consternation.

Read the rest of the post at the original site.

Searching for Saddam [Voices]

By Chris Wilson, Assistant Editor, Slate

Traffic had slowed to a crawl in Baghdad’s Azamiyah district as drivers stopped to ogle the president. It was April 2003, and Saddam Hussein cheerily greeted his subjects as a few bodyguards tried to keep the crowd at bay. Someone handed Saddam a bewildered baby, which he hoisted up in the air a few times and handed back.

Read the rest of the post at the original site.

Epson P-7000 Multimedia Photo Viewer Helps Document Explorer Richard Wiese's Kilimanjaro Climb

Adaptec Data Conditioning Platform Products on Display at CeBIT 2010

Credits Roll On Would-Be 'Thunder Lizard' B-Side Entertainment [Voices]

By Scott Austin, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Angel investor Mike Maples, Jr., is drawing a lot of attention in the tech blogosphere after his speech last week in which he descriptively labeled certain start-ups as “Thunder Lizards” (think Godzilla). In Maples’ eyes, these are companies that devour competitors and are “wildly disruptive” yet don’t need to raise a ton of capital.

While Maples has helped hatch plenty of potential Thunder Lizards – Chegg, Digg and Twitter, to name a few – one of his start-ups won’t have a chance to mature into a hulking market terror. Austin, Texas-based B-Side Entertainment Inc., which operated Web sites for film festivals and offered distribution and marketing services to filmmakers, has gone belly-up, according to indie film publication Filmmaker Magazine.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Daily Crunch: Gifts from Space Edition

Compost-powered heating
Science vindicates afternoon naps, yet again
Remember that post about the wire shoe thing?
Walking and jumping and generating energy, oh my
Go Computer: Help the aged
Quick Look: Motorola Devour

Pannon Selects Alcatel-Lucent for Complete Mobile Network IP Transformation and Prepares Network for LTE

Alcatel-Lucent Increases IP Service Provider Router Revenue and Market Share for Third Consecutive Year

VASCO Data Security Partners With Tech Data to Offer Market Leading Strong Authentication to North American Channel

Mobile Roadie Now Creates Apps For Android Ecosystem

We’re big fans of Mobile Roadie, a startup that helps develop iPhone apps. But the one gripe we had was that Mobile Roadie was limited to the iPhone platform. Today, our wish came true as Mobile Roadie is launching functionality for Android phones.

The beauty of Mobile Roadie’s platform is that it offers a dead simple mostly-automated system to build apps and have them posted to Apple’s App Store in as little as a week. Launched earlier this year, the startup develops mobile apps for other conferences, events, and venues, as well as musicians, athletes, politicians, and other celebrities. The apps can provide users with access to news, music, live and recorded video, photos, event listings, and more. The apps also feature integration with YouTube, Brightcove, Flickr, Twitpic, Ustream, Topspin, Google News, RSS, Twitter, and Facebook.

Another bonus of Mobile Roadie’s platform is that its CMS allows users to simultaneously make updates to both their iPhone and Android Apps. And using push notifications, customers can send alerts that appear on users’ screens, geo targeting messages down to a one-mile radius. With the launch of Google Android support, Mobile Roadie will be powering both iPhone and Android apps for Ashton Kutcher, Dolly Parton, and Madonna. We hear Taylor Swift will be launching apps soon as well.

Mobile Roadie also developed the official iPhone app for LeWeb, the foremost European technology conference organized by French entrepreneur and Seesmic founder, Loic Le Meur and his wife, Geraldine. The app was a huge hit at the conference. Mobile Roadie also recently struck a deal with Random House to power iPhone apps for authors.

There’s no doubt that Mobile Roadie’s functionality for Android platforms will make its platform more attractive to users. And the ability to simultaneously manage your iPhone and Android apps through one interface is a compelling feature. With Mobile Roadie’s track record of success over the past year, we’ll continue to expect more innovations to be produced from the bootstrapped startup in the near future.

Loud Noises! Google Buzz Is A Broken Instrument Capable Of Beautiful Music. - Washington Post

BBC News (blog)

Loud Noises! Google Buzz Is A Broken Instrument Capable Of Beautiful Music. Washington Post Google Buzz is now two weeks old. I decided to hold off on writing about it (beyond my overview on launch day), until I had a solid amount of time to play with it and gather my thoughts. Now I have. And now I will.My reasoning for holding off is pretty ... Privacy watchdogs and parents feel Google Buzz may put children at riskTopNews United States Google Buzz may put children at risk, parents fearLos Angeles Times Does Google Buzz Worry Parents? Here are AlternativesPC World Harvard Crimson -eWeek -Atlantic Online all 122 news articles »

FBI investigating Lower Merion School District over laptop spying (plus a commemorative tee)

FBI investigating Lower Merion School District over laptop spying (plus a commemorative tee)

The FBI and a Philadelphia-area prosecutor are looking into whether a school district broke the law when it remotely activated cameras on school-owned laptops and watched students in their homes.

Climate-denier's Bible is a pack of lies

Lomborg also went to town on the 2002 breakup of Antarctica's Larsen B ice shelf, which environmentalists blamed on global warming. "The Larsen area" has been breaking up for centuries, he argued, so the huge breakup cannot be blamed on man-made global warming. But the study he cited for that statement, writes Friel, "was not a study of the Larsen B ice shelf...Thus, while supposedly demonstrating that the 2002 [breakup] had a precedent during the Holocene, Lomborg dropped the specific reference to Larsen B, inserted the broader 'Larsen area' reference, and cited a study about the Larsen A area as if it supported his claims about the Larsen B area."

I've quoted the above at some length because it is indicative of two things: Friel's fine-grained sleuthing and the unfortunate lack of reader-friendliness that has resulted. Friel also undercuts his thesis by significant overkill, chastising Lomborg for describing a source as "Figure 10.6.1" rather than "Section 10.6.1." That is sloppiness on Lomborg's part, not duplicity, and including it--and many, many like it--makes Friel seem like Inspector Javert in obsessive pursuit of Jean Valjean. Mixing the trivial with the significant doesn't help his argument. Friel also gets tripped up by the recent revelation that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relied for its assertion about Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035 on an off-the-cuff (since retracted) comment, not a rigorous study. Friel criticizes Lomborg for saying they would disappear by the end of this century, arguing that he should have accepted the IPCC's date of 2035. Oops.

Climate-denier's Bible is a pack of lies

NGO Networks In Haiti Cause Problems For ISPs

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Painful font made from pinched skin and clothespegs

Painful font made from pinched skin and clothespegs

Skinographie (via Make)

Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of Detroit now available for download and remix

Lost Landscapes of Detroit 2010 (Thanks, Rick!)

Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of Detroit now available for download and remix

Walking the streets by the WTC, using a coin-toss as your guide

48 Hours from Ground Zero (Thanks, Gavin!)

Walking the streets by the WTC, using a coin-toss as your guide

Google Search Share Slips in China, Bing Tiny in 2009

It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see.

As those women ignore the existence of parental controls, Schiller continues to explain that Apple "obviously care[s] about developers, but in the end ha[s] to put the needs of the kids and parents first." Somehow that's supposed to help us understand why Sports Illustrated's and FHM's apps remain in the App Store:

When asked about the Sports Illustrated app, Mr. Schiller said Apple took the source and intent of an app into consideration. "The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format," he said.

So the lesson is that as long as your parents and grandparents recognize the brand, it's acceptable wanking material? Or is it that if enough mums complain about fart apps then those too will be purged from the App Store?

As mentioned before, what's sad about this is that in Apple's early years, it was somewhat of a counterpoint to corporate computing for suits, by suits. They were supposed to make computers for people, by real humans. Founded by a man who asked potential employees when they lost their virginity as part of an interview. Today we have a company that has baby music in its commercials, like we're all 10 year old idiots who have never heard the word fuck—let alone have fucked—and need to be protected from little programs that may have breasts in them. Then again, Steve Jobs knows his legacy and it isn't sex apps. It's great hardware and software.

But why the hell can't gadget porn and real porn coexist? [NYT via Tech Crunch]

That year, National Geographic printed an article called "High Tech, High Risk, and High Life," playing on the key elements of the atmosphere. You can read the full article here, but two parts—two predictions—stood out from all the anecdotes of success. The first shows the significance of Silicon Valley then and now:

Befriending the computer, and putting it to work and play in daily life a decade before most of us found the courage to touch a keyboard, Silicon Valley and its families may well be a glimpse of a computer-and-communications culture that is the prototype of the future.

For most of us, it might be difficult to believe that there would've been a time when communication through phone and fiber lines wasn't the norm—that it was almost intimidating—for people of our current ages. In Silicon Valley though, it was becoming as common as it is now. Nearly 30 years ago, that little area was already rushing toward everything we love and hate about technology today.

It was also developing into a place that would survive all the failures it would breed with every success story as a quote from Sal Accardo implies. He remarked that "Silicon Valley will continue to be the cerebrum, a magnet for creative minds." Not so far off, was he? We still gravitate to that western corner of the United States for our newest gadgets, for the hottest in social media, and for the strangest of startups. Old as it is, Silicon Valley is still giving birth to another generation of wild kids with even wilder ideas.

I recommend reading the full article over at Modern Mechanix for a stroll down tech memory lane and a few giggles over the way we spoke of the future back then, it'll bring an odd feeling of familiarity. [Modern Mechanix]

Source: Gizmodo | 23 Feb 2010 | 12:00 am

Loud Noises! Google Buzz Is A Broken Instrument Capable Of Beautiful Music.

Google Buzz is now two weeks old. I decided to hold off on writing about it (beyond my overview on launch day), until I had a solid amount of time to play with it and gather my thoughts. Now I have. And now I will.

My reasoning for holding off is pretty simple: I was confused. For the first few hours I was sure it was the best thing ever. Then I was certain it was the worst thing ever. The truth, not surprisingly, is likely somewhere in the middle. Google Buzz is a service with a ton of potential, but the execution of it is so bad right now, that’s it’s at points completely unusable.

I’m not going to go into the privacy implications of it, because those have already been discussed ad-nauseum. And while plenty of them certainly seem valid, I’m just thinking about Buzz from a pure product perspective.

First, the bad:

These entire two weeks, one problem has stood out above all others to me with Buzz: when people set the service to automatically import tweets and FriendFeed messages, Buzz collects them in bulk and spews them into your Buzz stream only once ever few hours (and sometimes once a day). If you happen to follow a person who imports either of these and is even just moderately prolific on either service, it leads to a Buzz stream that is ridiculously overrun by one contact.

Earlier today for example, one of my contacts had 30 messages in a row from FriendFeed import at the exact same time. So in order to see anything else on Buzz, I had to scroll below these 30 messages. Sure, I could mute them (and for some I did), but that takes way too long to do. And the reality is, you shouldn’t have to do that. This is just poor execution.

And it’s one thing if this happens once, but it happens multiple times a day. The same exact thing happened just hours after that one incident, but with tweets instead of FriendFeed messages — over 20 of them instantly instantly overtook my Buzz stream. It renders the service completely unusable unless you unsubscribe from that user — how’s that for a social network? One that works best the less social it is.

But that seems to be the case. Google has been testing the product internally for a few months, and a few Googlers have noted that in their longer experience with the site, they’ve found that it’s best to only follow a handful of people and let Buzz’s algorithms do the rest of the work to find you content you’ll be interested in. Again, it’s a social network where it’s better to be less social. Odd.

Currently, I’m following just 79 people of the over 1,500 that follow me — I’d like to follow more, but I know it will just make my Buzz experience worse (because I was and had to cut a bunch out). In fact, I could probably do with half the noise I currently see, so maybe I should cut some of those 79 as well. That really seems to be the only way to make it manageable right now.

As far as I can tell, even after two weeks of muting, liking, and commenting quite a bit, I’m not seeing the service tailor itself to my needs. Google promised this would be a big part of it, but if it’s doing it, it’s not doing it well enough — to the point where I need them to actually tell me in what way they’re doing it.

Basically, Buzz needs to become FriendFeed. From the moment I first saw it, I thought it was FriendFeed — and it kind of is, but minus all of the good filtering, social recommendation, and stacking options. For example, in FriendFeed, I can not only just mute an item, I can mute just a certain type of item just from a certain user. I’d love to do that for the aforementioned people’s tweets and FriendFeed items. Also, FriendFeed does a far superior job of bunching together similar items if you import a lot of them at once. So, for example, those 20+ tweets would have been condensed to one or two with a link to “18 more like this” which you could click to expand if you wanted to see them.

Speaking of click to expand, that’s something else Buzz needs to utilize better immediately. When I see I have new Buzz unread items, I expect them to be big entries, not comments. So when I click on the Buzz tab and see 100 new comments that I must scroll through to get to another item, I’m annoyed. The comments, while often interesting, are just meant to supplement the content they are talking about. Instead, they completely overwhelm the original message. Buzz likes to show me all the comments for any item I’ve expanded just once. By default, Buzz needs to collapse all but maybe the top and button comments each time, with the option to click to see the rest. You know, just like FriendFeed does.

I don’t see how Buzz could so closely copy many of FriendFeed’s features but leave out the vital part: the filtering. Without it, FriendFeed would just be a bunch of noise as well. That’s the nature of importing social data from a variety of sites — it’s about taking a lot of content and presenting it in a way that’s manageable. Right now, Buzz is failing badly at that. And just imagine if they add more auto-import options (FriendFeed has dozens) — it will be totally out of control.

Frankly, I think Buzz should completely disable the auto-importing of tweets, FriendFeed items, and anything else they cannot pull in in realtime until they are able to. That’s another key area Buzz misses the boat on. FriendFeed works with Twitter because it is real-time importing tweets (and when that was broken, I quit using it). When Buzz imports tweets in bunches (or even just late), they’re pretty much useless across-the-board. They’re just noise.

And that’s what Google Buzz is right now, noise. If that’s what they were going for with the name, it worked.

But wait, the good:

Okay, now that I’ve slammed Buzz for what I see as fundamental flaws that make it unusable for most of the time in its current state. I’ll talk about what I actually do like about it — and make no mistake, there are things, otherwise I wouldn’t care about the poor execution.

Hands down, the best thing Buzz has going for it is the usage. It’s huge. Because the crammed it into Gmail, Buzz has likely already been exposed to way more users than FriendFeed ever was. The big knock against FriendFeed was always that it was the coolest service no one was using. Google Buzz can be the FriendFeed that everyone is using.

A number of items from popular users are regularly getting over 100 comments, and hundreds of “likes.” Because I’m always in Gmail, I find myself checking it quite often, even despite my aforementioned problems. Further, while some people are annoyed with Buzz messages showing up in their inbox, I find the fact that you can respond to them right from there very, very useful. The fact that you can reply to buzzes over IM is also very interesting. I still believe Google is onto something very smart with this Buzz integration within Gmail (again, it just needs to make Buzz itself better).

Buzz also does a great job of making it quick and easy to share. The box at the top of the service works well, and I particularly like that when you paste a link in, you can easily select which pictures from the site to include in the buzz. The idea of private buzzing at first seemed silly to me because you have to create a group, until I realized that if I wanted to message just one person, I could use IM or even email within Gmail as well. While I’m not yet using it, it does seem like private group buzzing could be useful.

But probably my favorite part of Buzz is the mobile version. The web app is very well made, and handles elements like location well (and makes much more sense right now than Google’s other location product, Latitude). On Android phones, Buzz is even better when you use it on the Google Maps app. It’s also very cool to see on a map where other buzzes are coming from.

Okay, so there was more bad:

Yes, Google Buzz needs a lot of work in my opinion. To be honest, I think they should just finish the job and more completely emulate everything about FriendFeed. FriendFeed was a great service, but once Facebook acquired the team, it became more of a ghost town then some already thought it was. But there still is a need for this type of service in my opinion, and I’m positive that Google Buzz can be it. (That is, unless Facebook, with their secret messaging project, beats them to it.)

While Google will never admit it, it seems pretty clear the product was shoved out the door prematurely. The mad rush to make changes and the blog posts with tips on how to use it prove that. It definitely should have launched in Gmail Labs, where these kinks could be ironed out amongst a more understanding early-adopter crowd. Instead, Google clearly wanted to go from zero to social in four seconds flat. Unfortunately, they forgot to install seat belts. Or, at the very least, barf bags.

Now Google runs the risk of having users who have already soured on Buzz because it was shoved in their face as a good but completely unpolished idea. Because of that, they’ll have double the work to do if they hope to convince those same users to try it again when it is fully ready to go. That is, if it is ever fully ready to go. They’re close yet so far from turning that annoying buzz into music to my ears.

CrunchBase Information

Google Buzz

FriendFeed

Information provided by CrunchBase

Source: TechCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:55 pm

Is Jive Software Taking Steps Toward An IPO?

If there is any doubt about the social Web moving into the enterprise, then the news today from Jive Software has to make even the hardest skeptics start to wonder. The Portland, Oregon company that has...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:45 pm

Mustache crayons!

Emily sez, "Go incognito with mustache crayons! I originally made these mustache crayons for my nieces and nephew and they loved them so much, I thought I'd share them with the world. They are nontoxic...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:43 pm

Mustache crayons!

Emily sez, "Go incognito with mustache crayons! I originally made these mustache crayons for my nieces and nephew and they loved them so much, I thought I'd share them with the world. They are nontoxic and made from pieces of Crayola crayons."

Mustache Crayons Set of Four You Pick the Colors (Thanks, Emily!)

Previously:

• Rings made from crayons - Boing Boing
• Carved crayons - Boing Boing

Source: Boing Boing | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:43 pm

Shanghai: superfuturism and antiquity

Marilyn from National Geographic sez, "I think you'll love these Shanghai photos by Fritz Hoffmann in March National Geo. It's hard to believe such a superfuturistic megacity also looks like a village from 100 years ago."

What she said. There are lots of places in the world where seamless high-tech and ancient cobblestones exist side by side, but I've never been anywhere in which you can go from one to the other so quickly as Shanghai. One moment you're on the set of Blade Runner, then you turn a corner and you're in a historical drama, with no sign of glass-and-steel in sight.

Shanghai Dreams (Thanks, Marilyn!)

Previously:

• Shanghai's Crackdown on... Pajamas Boing Boing
• 1980s "China retro" shop opens in Shanghai Boing Boing
• Love-hymn for hardware-hacker-heaven in Shanghai - Boing Boing
• Shanghai Ning, crosscultural Asian/American hip-hop - Boing Boing
• Lou Jing, half black Chinese girl, sparks race debate in China ...
• Interior pix of 500 Shanghai homes, with commentary - Boing Boing
• Photos: Shanghai "Adult Toys and Reproductive Health" Expo ...

Source: Boing Boing | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:40 pm

Shanghai: superfuturism and antiquity

Marilyn from National Geographic sez, "I think you'll love these Shanghai photos by Fritz Hoffmann in March National Geo. It's hard to believe such a superfuturistic megacity also looks like a village...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:40 pm

Disney execs as Marvel superheroes

Kirk Manley sez, "I Just finished a series of illustrations for Fast Company magazine, for an article in the March issue on the Disney company. Each illustration presents key Disney executives and deal makers as famous Marvel Comics superheroes."

Disney's Own Superheroes (Thanks, Kirk!)

Previously:

• Epic Disney/Marvel mashup
• Disney/Marvel mashups
• Disney buying Marvel
• Marvel/Disney hybrid photoshopping contest
• Jack Kirby estate will wrest copyrights back from Disney-Marvel
• Warner/DC comics shuts down children's cancer charity auction over ...

Source: Boing Boing | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:31 pm

Girl stuck in Pittsburgh airport overnight shoots epic horsing around video

Miss K sez, "This young woman made the best of a 10 hour stopover during Snowpocalypse '09 by filming herself mugging around the empty airport."

This is an epic use of downtime. I stand in awe, and am ashamed to say that I would probably have just gotten on my laptop near an electrical outlet and blogged and answered email for ten hours.

Pittsburgh International Airport after hours

Previously:

• Gentleman arrested by fashion police at LA airport for wearing his ...
• David Byrne: I was BoingBoing-blocked at Denver airport. - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: TSA: "no butt plugs" airport screening graphic
• Boing Boing: Charming travel short animation made from airport ...
• Baby put through airport x-ray - Boing Boing
• Airport officials seize dangerous Shakespeare research - Boing Boing
• National Guardsmen on airport duty - Boing Boing
• Airport feds rip off travellers - Boing Boing

The website is in Japanese, so you may need to run it through a translation service. While you do that, I'll be here and wondering what kind of health issues could come as a result of all the preservatives in a few thousand pre-packaged servings of instant noodles. [i-Ramen via Boing Boing]

Source: Gizmodo | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:20 pm

Apple Exec Phil Schiller Speaks On The App Store’s Sex Ban

It took them four days, but Apple is finally explaining its surprise decision to remove nearly all “sexy” content from the App Store. Once again, the morsels of information come from Apple SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller, who spoke with the New York Times for an article published earlier this evening. None of it is too surprising, but Schiller’s unconvincing explanation as to why some applications like Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit app and Playboy will be allowed to remain on the store is sure to anger plenty of developers.

So why did Apple decide to pull these sexy apps?

“It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see”

Which makes sense given the broad appeal of the iPhone, but Apple should have seen this coming, and it implemented parental controls for a reason. And then Schiller goes on to pour salt into the wounds of recently spurned developers with his explanation as to why a select few sexy applications will remain on the App Store.

“When asked about the Sports Illustrated app, Mr. Schiller said Apple took the source and intent of an app into consideration. “The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” he said.”

So apparently exposed cleavage in a Playboy application is less offensive to women and parents because it’s also being printed in a magazine, or something. The decision really isn’t all that surprising, either — there’s little risk of the Playboy application trying to sneak in some extreme nudity, and with only a handful of mainstream sexy apps there’s much less clutter. Still, such favoritism sets another bad precedent for the App Store, and Schiller’s explanation just feels lame.

Of course, if you’re still looking for ’sexy’ content on your iPhone, you can still find plenty of nudity in iTunes (Apple has no problem selling R rated movies). Or you could just pop open Safari.

CrunchBase Information

Philip Schiller

App Store

Information provided by CrunchBase

Source: TechCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:09 pm

Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic

DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reprinted with permission from Matthew Inman aka "The Oatmeal," a former web designer turned comic artist. You can see more of his work on The Oatmeal or in 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth, the comic book which he self published last year.

Source: Gizmodo | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:40 pm

Microsoft in Patent Deal With Amazon [Voices]

By Nick Wingfield, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said it reached a patent licensing agreement with Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) that gives the online retailer rights to use open-source software in its Kindle electronic book reader and servers based on the Linux operating system.

Under their agreement, Microsoft said Seattle-based Amazon will pay it an undisclosed sum. Microsoft, Redmond, Wash., said in a statement that the deal was a patent cross-license agreement under which it will also gain rights to Amazon patents that it didn’t identify.

The statement from Microsoft said Kindle uses both open-source and proprietary software components made by Amazon.

Open-source programs allow users to view and modify their “source code,” or underlying instructions. Linux and other programs that are created with the technique have been among the most effective competitors against Microsoft products.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:34 pm

UPDATE 1-Idemitsu sees March crude runs down amid weak demand

* Repeats Jan-March crude runs of 7.9 mln kl, down 2 pct y/y (Adds details)
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:13 pm

FCC survey shows need to teach broadband basics

To start, you've got up to Intel's Core i7-920 Extreme processor, a 17-inch WUXGA (1920×1200) primary display, and Nvidia Quadro FX 3800M graphics. The W701ds can ship with up to 16GB DDR3 memory, 500GB HD storage, and all models have WiMAX support, one USB 3.0 and four USB 2.0 ports, and a 2-megapixel camera.

But really, the star of the show is still that secondary display, which allows you to keep your mail your chat windows separate from your primary focus. It's a 10.6-inch, WXGA (1280x800) screen that that's stored in the laptop but pops out when needed for work or a fun party trick. Although with a weight over 9 pounds, it's unlikely that you're going to want to drag this monster to many parties. The W701ds will be available in March starting at $3800.

If you want to forgo the extra screen (because you are a crazy person?) and some power and storage, you might want to take a look at the base model of the W701. It compares favorably to the Dell M6500, while its $2200 base price compares favorably to the Dell's $2750. [Lenovo]

The processor's not the only upgrade from ThinkPad X200. The X201 adds a trackpad where before there was only a nub, and adds a 2-megapixel camera with improved low light performance. It also boots up in 20 seconds and shuts down in just five, about a 50% improvement.

What's missing? There's no USB 3.0, although you do have 3 USB 2.0 ports to work with, including one powered USB. There's no integrated optical drive, if you care about that sort of thing. You're stuck with Intel's subpar integrated graphics. And the X200 features the traditional ThinkPad keyboard instead of incorporating the island-style ThinkPad Edge keys. That's not a downgrade by any means—more just a matter of personal preference.

The X200 can be customized up to 500GB storage with full disk encryption, up to 8GB of memory, a 12-inch WXGA LED display, and a 9-cell battery that yields a listed 11 hours of battery life. The X201s build gets 12.2 hours on a 9-cell battery. Look for the X201 to debut in March starting at $1200, while the X201s base model can be had for $1600. [Lenovo]

Source: Gizmodo | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:01 pm

Extreme Test: Going Ballistic on Bulletproof Vests

Three bullet-resistant vests (no garment is truly bulletproof) feel the heat of a dozen .44-caliber rounds. Only one holds up exceptionally well.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

Extreme Test: Going Ballistic on Bulletproof Vests

Three bullet-resistant vests (no garment is truly bulletproof) feel the heat of a dozen .44-caliber rounds. Only one holds up exceptionally well.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

Feb 23, 1987: 'Quintessential' Supernova Bursts on the Scene

Supernova 1987A's light reaches Earth. It's the brightest of the 20th century, and the first visible to the naked eye since 1604.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

The Future of Money: It's Flexible, Frictionless and (Almost) Free

The reign of the bank and credit card cartel is ending. A new wave of financial upstarts is liberating your cash -- and the economy.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm

Lost Nazi Uranium Found In a Dutch Scrapyard

colin_faber writes "Lewis Page of the Register is reporting that forensic nuclear scientists at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre traced the two pieces of metal found in a Dutch scrapyard — described as a cube and a plate — back to their exact origins and dates. Apparently both came from ores extracted at the 'Joachimsthal' mine in what is now the Czech Republic from the former Nazi nuclear-weapons programme of the 1940s." The article runs through the roadblocks that, unknown to the Allies, the Nazi regime erected against their possible success in any nuclear bomb development during the war.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The idea's to find faults in the batteries so battery makers can fix them. What's depressing is that the lab's underfunded and apparently still looks like it's out of the Cold War, with ancient equipment and tinfoil wrapped around lines for safety. This is even as the lab has alerted battery makers to the kinds of serious problems that cause batteries to you know, explode—leading the industry to create backup systems like mechanical circuit breakers when batteries get too hot.

Check out the full profile at the WSJ, it's eye-popping, and not just for the detailed descriptions of how the lab tortures the hell out of batteries. [WSJvia Techmeme]

Source: Gizmodo | 22 Feb 2010 | 9:20 pm

AT&T Roars Back in PCWorld’s Second 3G Wireless Performance Test

The tool shown in the video isn't just a plain piece of wire, instead it's a special "government only" tool, but I'm sure that something similar could be constructed or purchased through not-so-legal channels. The point remains that it's a bit laughable that you'd have to resort to shoving a towel into your door handle when you leave your hotel room just in case some guy is smart enough to just circumvent the supposedly secure lock entirely. [BlackBag]

Source: Gizmodo | 22 Feb 2010 | 8:40 pm

YC-Funded Etacts Makes Sure You Never Fall Out Of Touch With Your Contacts

Email overload is a pain for many reasons, but above all, the worst thing about an overstuffed inbox is the fact that you sometimes miss messages you shouldn’t have, or you forget to keep in touch with the people who are important to you. If you’ve run into these issues before, a new Y Combinator-funded startup called Etacts might be exactly what you’re looking for.

Etacts is similar in some ways to CRMs like Highrise and SalesForce, but founders Evan Beard and Howie Liu say they’re focusing on helping people stay in touch, rather than on teams looking to complete sales. The service’s home screen features a list of people you know, ranked by how often you communicate with them via Email or phone. The list includes information like the total number of times you’re interacted with each person and when you first began talking with them online. Most important, it lets you know how long it’s been since you last contacted them, and lets you set regular reminders — if you go too long without talking to someone, the service will send you an alert.

To start using Etacts, you enter your email account login credentials (at the moment the service only works with Gmail or Google Apps, but support for any IMAP service provider is coming soon). From there, Etacts will examine your inbox to automatically build out your list of important contacts, so you don’t have to do any work. You can also optionally enter the credentials for your mobile carrier, which Etacts can use to track who you’ve talked to over the phone or have text messaged.

The service can use this data to offer plenty of related features. If you tell Etacts which of your contacts are especially important, it can automatically flag any new incoming messages. The service offers a plugin for Google Chrome and Firefox that adds a new button to Gmail’s interface: “Send and Remind Me”. Hit that, and you’ll send the message and automatically add a reminder to your Etacts account. If too many days go by without receiving a response, Etacts will remind you to resend your message (or to ask your contact what’s up).

And, if you really want to pump out your correspondence, you can turn to Etact’s message sending feature. This allows you to build templates of messages you commonly send, with variables for each person’s name. It’s essentially a mail merge, but it makes it easy to manually tweak each message for each recipient — you can construct 90% of the message from a template, and then add a personal touch yourself. You can get a feel for how you can modify the base message from this screenshot.

I really like most of the features Etacts has to offer — it’s straightforward enough that it didn’t take long at all to figure out how everything worked, and it seems like it would appeal to any professional that has to manage a sizable contact list. My biggest gripe with the service is the fact that it requires users to hand over their email login credentials to Etacts. The company only stores your Email headers (as opposed to the full message body), and I’m significantly more paranoid than your average consumer about this sort of thing, but other startups have had issues with this in the past. For example, reMail (which was just acquired by Google) launched with Email search that was powered by its own servers, and then switched to a model where searches were done locally on the user’s mobile phone (so that credentials weren’t exchanged).

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Etacts

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Source: TechCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 8:38 pm

If MIDs still matter, then get me one of these Moblic E7s pronto

What with tablets looming large on the horizon, one could be forgiven for thinking MIDs might be reaching the end of their usefulness. But when you put something like this in front of me, I can’t help but get excited. ABXY buttons and a real D-pad? Yes please.

Read the rest of this story at MobileCrunch…

Source: CrunchGear | 22 Feb 2010 | 8:01 pm

If MIDs still matter, then get me one of these Moblic E7s pronto

What with tablets looming large on the horizon, one could be forgiven for thinking MIDs might be reaching the end of their usefulness. But when you put something like this in front of me, I can’t help but get excited. ABXY buttons and a real D-pad? Yes please. 4″ 800×480 screen, 8GB of built-in storage, 600MHz ARM A8 processor? Man, this thing will be a mobile gaming powerhouse if it isn’t super expensive.

The Moblic E7 is still pretty much a cryptogadget right now, though. No pricing or availability is indicated on the Moblic page, so I’m just going to guess randomly. I’m going to say… $600 and available in the Summer, probably not in the US. Doesn’t that sound realistic?

[Image and find: CarryPad; via Engadget]

Source: MobileCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 7:48 pm

How Banker Trojans Steal Millions Every Day

redsoxh8r notes a blog post describing in some detail the operation of "man in the browser" Trojans used to empty victims' bank accounts. "Banker trojans have become a serious problem, especially in South America and the US. Trojans like Zeus, URLZone and others are the tip of the iceberg. These toolkits are now standard-issue weapons for criminals and state-sponsored hackers. Like Zeus, URLZone was created using a toolkit (available in underground markets). What this means is that the buyer of this toolkit can then create customized malware or botnets with different command-and-controls and configurations (such as which banks to attack), but having all the flexibility and power of the original toolkit. Having such a toolkit in the hands of multiple criminal groups paints a scary picture. It's simply not enough to eliminate a particular botnet and criminal group to solve this problem."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 22 Feb 2010 | 7:33 pm

Casio’s GPS camera coming in October

I don’t get GPS in cameras. There have been times (not many, but there have) when I’ve been out taking pictures and don’t necessarily want the whole world to know where I was. Casio’s new EX-10HG camera is going to take that option away from me, with their new GPS-enabled point and shoot camera.

My confusion aside, the Casio EX-10HG originally showed up as a concept camera at CES 2010, but was confirmed by a rep at PMA 2010 that they will be coming out this October, and will retail for about $400. No doubt they’ll sell a ton of them, and then we’ll all know where those family snapshots were taken.

Source: CrunchGear | 22 Feb 2010 | 7:05 pm

Bloom Box: Power plant in a box? (FAQ) - CNET

The Guardian

Bloom Box: Power plant in a box? (FAQ) CNET Start-up Bloom Energy says it can deliver a power plant in a box. What is it and how does it work? The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which is generating some serious buzz this week, will officially announce on Wednesday what it ... Will Bloom box replace power grid? Details on Wednesday (w/ Video)PhysOrg.com Bloom Unveiling Clean Energy Fuel CellInformationWeek Could Bloom Box revolutionize power industry?Computerworld BBC News (blog) -The Faster Times -V3.co.uk all 204 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:45 pm

Amazon, Microsoft sign patent deal - CNET

France24

Amazon, Microsoft sign patent deal CNET Microsoft and Amazon announced on Monday that the two have entered into a patent cross-licensing deal. As part of the pact, Amazon will pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money, though the two sides did not disclose more details. ... Microsoft, Amazon sign patent dealReuters Microsoft, Amazon in Patent DealTheStreet.com Amazon and Microsoft ink patent dealAFP Ars Technica -Seattle Post Intelligencer -MarketWatch all 167 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:45 pm

Guns Now Allowed in National Parks. Why exactly?

This is just weird -- a law has just come into effect this morning that allows guns in national parks and wildlife refuges throughout the United States. The New York Times reported on this story when the original item -- ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:35 pm

Photos: The birth of an HTC Legend unibody aluminum shell

Just last week, HTC announced the Legend. As the epic name implies, it’s essentially the “Hero 2“; its got the jutting chin, the rounded corners, and HTC’s software signatures all over it. The primary difference, outside of a minor (but still worthwhile) hardware spec bump, is the design of the body; carved from a single block of aluminum, it’s ridiculously light weight, super strong, and drop dead gorgeous.

While we somehow managed to over look it whilst roaming (almost absurdly) huge halls of Mobile World Congress, our buddies at MobileBurn spotted a display case showing off examples of the unibody shell as it steps through the manufacturing process.

Alas, there weren’t any nice little placards detailing the trip from point A to point B. I wouldn’t worry too much; even if there were placards, they’d probably all just read “Lasers.”

Check out MobileBurn’s gallery here.

Source: MobileCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:29 pm

Walmart Jumps Into Online Movie Rentals, Buys Vudu

Walmart is set to challenge Netflix for the title of king of online video rentals, with its upcoming purchase of video-streaming site Vudu.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:22 pm

How Random Is Microsoft’s Random Browser Choice Screen In Europe?

After a lengthy legal face-off, Microsoft and European antitrust officials recently agreed on the implementation of a so-called ballot screen that will give European Windows users a chance to download rivals’ browsers – including Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera – as possible alternatives to Redmond’s own Internet Explorer (see screenshot above or go here).

Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft has agreed to provide a “ballot screen” to most European customers that will offer links to downloads of browsers offered by the company’s fiercest competitors when it comes to the Web browsing space, starting next week. The browser choice screen was designed to give all listed browsers a random order upon each new visit; antitrust regulators saw this as the right path to take to make European consumers more aware of alternative browsers to IE without favoring one over the other.

But how random is the presentation of the browser on that ballot screen, really?

That’s exactly what the good people behind Slovakian tech news site DSL.sk set out to discover, based on the current implementation and code found on www.browserchoice.eu. Their findings were quite interesting, as they seem to suggest that the selection isn’t really that random as one would imagine, and that Microsoft is not doing itself any favors at all, when in fact it may even be giving Google’s Chrome browser a bit of an edge.

It took me some creative Google Translating to figure out how the team got to its conclusion, but finally a Skype chat with one of the reporters at DSL.sk cleared things up for me.

The page on www.browserchoice.eu is static, running nothing but Javascript. The guys at DSL.sk basically automatically loaded that page tens of thousands of times, and they kept score of which browsers were shown in which order for each of those instances. And not only did they test this sufficiently on this page, but DSL.sk did the same for the core Javascript algorithm that triggers the random ordering.

The test were run using Internet Explorer 8 on a Windows 7 machine, because the ballot screen will pop up in IE for users who install the relevant Windows Update and have set Microsoft’s browser as default.

More than once out of every four hits, the page would show Google Chrome on the far left, and Internet Explorer would only make it to the first spot in 13,8% of page loads (scoring well below all four other browsers). In fact, in over 50% of all page hits, Internet Explorer would come out to the far right spot of the five browser choices shown on the screen.

Here’s a table with the stats – the titles are in Slovakian but are simply indicating the order of the browser and its average position in the right column:

What’s most apparent is that Google Chrome scored ‘best’ out of five for all 3 first spots on the browser choice screen, and that Internet Explorer appeared on the far right way more than rival browsers. We should note that this doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a conspiracy going on – perhaps tens of thousands of hits are simply not enough to produce relevant results, or the results are skewed for a different reason. DSL, for one, claims the test results are quite stable and don’t seem to alter much when the number of loads keeps on increasing.

Be that as it may, it’s also worth noting that the ‘first spot’ doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also the ‘best spot’ – eye movement research could well conclude that the middle, far right or any other of the spots is actually the most beneficial one.

For what it’s worth, the DSL team says they had to make two minor changes to the code in order to run their tests mimicking the real behavior of the page as closely as possible, so theoretically the results could end up being more random than they appear based on the results cited above when the browser choice screen actually goes live.

Also, different browsers produced different results, although it didn’t matter much whether IE6, IE7 or IE8 was used for testing. Tests were also run in Firefox, baring completely different results, although there was never an equal distribution between browsers whatsoever, so even then the ‘randomness’ can be questioned.

Do you think the selection on the browser choice screen will end up being completely random, or will more exhaustive research ultimately show that there’s a consistent pattern of browser selection happening here?

(Hat tip to Patrik Hornik)

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Microsoft

Windows Internet Explorer

Information provided by CrunchBase

Source: TechCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:07 pm

Does Global Warming Cause Hurricanes?

This simple question is probably one of the hardest to answer in all of climate science. Despite over 100 years of hurricane records, and fifty years of satellite-based data, researchers are just starting to get a picture of how the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:04 pm

Microsoft, Amazon sign patent deal (Reuters)

Reuters - Microsoft Corp said on Monday it signed a patent agreement with Amazon.com Inc that allows the two companies to share technology in several areas including Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader and Amazon's use of Linux-based servers.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:03 pm

Who actually needs a 64GB SD card?

The idea of having a 64GB card in your camera is a strange one. I take a fair amount of pictures in RAW, yet I rarely if ever run up against the edge of my 8GB card. I mean, you’re shooting digitally and regularly offload your pictures, right? The only situation I can think of where this might be useful is one where you literally have to shoot thousands of pictures in a row (somehow the battery must last that long) without ever switching out a card or dumping them into your image editor. When was the last time you took four thousand pictures in one go?

I suppose people shooting high-definition video might find these useful. You’d have to have a bunch of them in array, though, because data throughput is pretty limited right now (the SanDisk one goes at a poky 9-15MB/s). But at $350 per card, you’re paying way more per gig than you would if you just got a 1.8″ SSD or two — and they’ve got fantastic write rates. Plus, again, you’d probably run out of battery before you ran out of space, even shooting at 4K or something.

There’s really no market for these right now, unless I’m overlooking something. Not that I don’t think it’s cool — I mean, it’s totally sci-fi that I could carry around my entire music collection in the coin pocket of my jeans, but right now there’s really no reason to. Give it a year, though, and these things will be looking much more practical.

Update: Ahh, I thought of one use. Storage in a small form-factor computer like a tablet. Can always use more space there. Still too expensive for that, though.

Source: CrunchGear | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:00 pm

Cyber Evil Will Thrive Without Global Rules — Good Luck With That

Thwarting online thieves, spies and vandals who threaten global companies and governments might only work if cyberspace is regulated internationally. The bad guys are lucky for now -- such cooperation does not exist.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:00 pm

1933 Ford 'E-Rod' Is EV for the NASCAR Set

Take one classic American hot rod, add some 21st-century technology ... and vroom!

Source: Wired Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:00 pm

Review: Riveting 'Heavy Rain' Murder Story Is Big Leap for Games

By pushing the possibilities of what a videogame can be, this sprawling story about a serial killer points the way toward the deeply immersive future of interactive gaming.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:45 pm

IOC Orders Blogger To Take Down Video

An anonymous reader writes "The International Olympic Committee has ordered a blogger to remove a video from his website showing the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. The IOC asserts that it owns all the rights to all images taken at the games, and only licensed broadcasters can use them. However, the blogger, Stephen Pate, points to a Canadian law that allows copyrighted images to be used in newsworthy cases."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:37 pm

Redundant Clock is redundant

How delightfully meta. It’s not real, unfortunately.

[via bookofjoe and OhGizmo!]

Source: CrunchGear | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:30 pm

Wal-Mart Buys Web Video Company Vudu (PC World)

PC World - Wal-Mart Stores is taking another swing at the online movie business with the acquisition of Vudu.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:30 pm

Chinese programmer fingered in Google attacks - Ars Technica

Telegraph.co.uk

Chinese programmer fingered in Google attacks Ars Technica A Chinese programmer with ties to the government has been fingered as the author of the program used to carry out the high-profile cyber attacks against Google and other companies earlier this ... Report: Chinese programmer wrote code used against GoogleCNET Hacking Inquiry Puts China's Elite in New LightNew York Times US experts close in on Google hackersFinancial Times PC World -Wall Street Journal -DailyTech all 498 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:12 pm

Experts: School can track laptops less intrusively (AP)

AP - School officials in Pennsylvania who admit remotely activating student webcams to locate missing laptops could have used far less intrusive methods such as GPS tracking devices, technology and privacy experts say.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:12 pm

Report gives Apple top honors for reliability (Macworld.com)

Macworld.com - Apple is selling more Macs than ever these days. And according to a survey from a computer support company, those new customers are enjoying some very reliable machines. On Monday, Rescuecom released its 2010 computer reliability report, with Apple winning the top spot in the survey. The company also led the pack in Rescuecom's last quarterly survey.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:06 pm

DARPA planning to test Mach 6 hyperplane in April

This rather unconvincing video shows a current project of DARPA’s, in which a jet is accelerated first by regular propulsion, then ramjets, then scramjets — eventually pushing the vehicle to a ridiculous mach 6. That’s somewhere around 1700-2000 meters per second, or ~4000MPH. That’s if they can keep the thing from breaking apart. Wikipedia tells us that “while very short suborbital scramjet test flights have been performed, no flown scramjet has ever been designed to survive a flight test.” That’s not very promising.

I say unconvincing because first of all, they don’t make mach 6 look very exciting. Also, the people watching look bored. And the patriotic music pretty much overwhelms the narration. If this is the same amount of care they’re planning on putting into this hypersonic craft, that thing is going to break up before they get it on the runway.

The idea is that these things could carry 12000 pounds of payload over huge distances extremely quickly. Like across the Pacific in two hours. I mean, that’s obviously the application of a fast airplane. But I wonder if they’ve considered that if they just load this sucker up with ball bearings or something and drop them out, they’ve essentially created a flying railgun. Scrap metal hitting a target at 4000MPH? Yeah, possibly destructive.

Anyway, the video is years old but it’s news because they’re planning a test flight for April. The landing site is actually just a place in the ocean they’re going to let it crash, so I don’t think we’ll be seeing these things overhead any time soon. But it’s good to keep abreast of developments like this in case you see one; otherwise you might think it’s a UFO.

Source: CrunchGear | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:00 pm

In the Future, One CF Card Will Hold 200 Years' Worth of Porn

The latest version of the CompactFlash standard raises the theoretical memory capacity of the little cards from 137 GB to a whopping 188 petabytes. What will we do with all that portable storage?

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:00 pm

In the Future, One CF Card Will Hold 200 Years' Worth of Porn

The latest version of the CompactFlash standard raises the theoretical memory capacity of the little cards from 137 GB to a whopping 188 petabytes. What will we do with all that portable storage?

Source: Wired Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:00 pm

NetStreams Welcomes Clarity AV as New Manufacturer's Representative

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:59 pm

Google Will Ask Buzz's Early Adopters to Confirm Privacy Choices

Google is set to ask early users of its new social networking service to make sure they really want to make their networks public. The move aims to give privacy-enhancing changes to those who signed on immediately.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:58 pm

Real-Time, Movie-Quality CGI For Games

An anonymous reader writes "An Intel-owned development team can now render CGI-quality graphics in real time. 'Their video clips show artists pulling together 3D elements like a jigsaw puzzle (see for example this video starting at about 3:38), making movie-level CG look as easy as following a recipe.' They hope that the simplicity of 'Project Offset' could ultimately give them the edge in the race to produce real-time graphics engines for games."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:54 pm

RemakingMySpace: Controversial. Bold. Progressive. And Dead.

In the summer of 2009 MySpace hired Katie Geminder, Facebook’s Director of User Experience and Design, as an SVP. Her primary job was to assemble a “swat team” of leading outside designers and user interface experts and re-imagine MySpace from the ground up. That team was made up of four people – including two former Apple designers and one ex-Facebooker – and worked out of a conference room in MySpace’s San Francisco offices for six months. They were creating a new site, located at remakingmyspace.com, and it was going to launch sometime right about now.

RemakingMySpace was going to be a new version of MySpace with every piece of legacy stuff thrown out the door. Users and employees would be solicited for input – to get new ideas and vote on already submitted ones – to rebuild the service brick by brick. Most of the work over the last six months was spent reimagining the design in various ways that would be shown to users, and building tools for the submission and consideration of new ideas. And “users” was broadly defined to include input from artists and bands, advertisers, etc.

It was bold, controversial and progressive, say some sources. And now it’s also very, very dead. Geminder left MySpace last week. And the guy who hired her, former CEO Owen Van Natta, was terminated the week before.

So what happened? The project was trouble from the start. Geminder was strongly pushing the project, obviously, and had the support of Van Natta. But she was working outside of Chief Product Officer Jason Hirschhorn’s organization. Hirschhorn hated the idea from the start, say multiple sources, and constantly worked to undermine it. He favored a much more straightforward redesign effort. And, sources say, VP Product Mike Macadaan was also an outsider to the project, and strongly disapproved say of the whole process.

None of that mattered as long as Van Natta was CEO and was able to push the project along. But once he was gone and Mike Jones and Hirschhorn took over as co-presidents, remakingmyspace was history. Within a day the team was dissolved and moved back into the product organization. The Apple designers, there as consultants, will likely be leaving shortly as their contracts expire.

We’ve spoken with sources on both sides of this. Some say that the the consultants were way too expensive and Hirschhorn and Jones thought the pace of the project was too slow. One source said that almost no work was done at all, and that the team was often absent from the office. But others who knew about the project (the site was live for some MySpace employees) thought it was brilliant, and noted that six months wasn’t all that long for a project of this scope. There was genuine excitement within MySpace over remakingmyspace.com, and some are disgusted that it was all thrown away.

One thing that strikes us as odd is the fact that the chief complaints – expense and time – were no longer relevant. The project was effectively done and the expense of it was behind them. “This was killed out of pure vindictiveness,” says one source. Another said that Hirschhorn never even bothered to really understand it, he just wanted it killed.

So what comes next? A straightforward redesign that won’t rock the boat, says one source. Another says that many of the ideas from remakingmyspace will eventually make their way into whatever MySpace launches. Officially, all MySpace will say is “The reimagination of MySpace’s user interface is a top priority. Under Jason Hirschhorn, VP of Product Mike Macadaan and his team are leading the charge to redesign the site and create a beautiful new and exciting environment for our users.”

We’re now trying to track down and verify screen shots and the new logo for remakingmyspace.com. Stay tuned for updates. And in all fairness, unless and until we’ve seen some of the site for ourselves, there’s no way to know which “side” of the argument is right.

CrunchBase Information

MySpace

Information provided by CrunchBase

Source: TechCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:47 pm

The Mysterious Social Search Abyss Of 2010

Google Trends is a great tool to get an overview on terms people are searching for with the largest search engine in the world. It also shows interesting trends. And something is definitely going on with searches for a few large social networks using Google.

At some point in mid January, a group of sites including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and Foursquare saw a huge drop in number of searches for their domains. Now, to be clear, these are only searches for the .com names, for example, “facebook.com” and “youtube.com” and not just the terms “facebook” and “youtube” themselves. Still, across the board, traffic had been rising for these .com domains and then at the same time all dropped off a cliff.

One might think this has to do with the China situation (Google warned it might have to pull out of China after saying it would remove previous restraints on searches). But drilling down into the data shows that while the searches from China did take a big fall, they did as well from other countries around the world too.

Other sites saw drops as well, but by far these large social sites saw the most pronounced drops that all seem to be aligned. Weirdly, google.com did not see any drop (though I’m not sure who uses Google to google google.com).

We’ve reached out to Google for some clarification or insight into this and will update when we hear back. The logical answer would seem to be that they switched something in mid-January that led to these huge drops in social site searches on Google, but who knows. Maybe we have a wild honey bee extinction situation going on here within Google.

Update: Google’s own Orkut.com also seeing a drop. As are several popular European social sites like Tuenti.com.

[via Mrinal]

CrunchBase Information

Google

Facebook

Foursquare

Twitter

YouTube

Flickr

Information provided by CrunchBase

Source: TechCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:41 pm

Microsoft and Amazon.com Sign Patent Agreement

REDMOND, Wash., Feb. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has signed a patent cross-license agreement with Amazon.com Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:36 pm

Twitter Averaging 50 Million Tweets Per Day - PC Magazine

Pocket-lint.com

Twitter Averaging 50 Million Tweets Per Day PC Magazine What a difference a year makes. Twitter is now fielding 50 million Tweets every day, Kevin Weil, the analytics lead at the micro-blogging site, said in a Monday blog post. People are now tweeting an average of 600 tweets per second, ... Twitter Hits 50 Million Tweets Per Day – Mashable Mirror :: room8888Mashtrends Twitter Hits 50 Million Tweets Per DayWashington Post Twitter users tweet 50 million a dayAfterdawn.com VentureBeat -BizReport -VatorNews all 93 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:29 pm

The Bloom Box: Energy Breakthrough or Silicon Valley Hype? [Voices]

By Rebecca Smith and Jim Carlton, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal

The blogosphere is abuzz over the disclosure by startup Bloom Energy that it has come up with a fuel cell technology that can replace conventional energy sources.

But can it really? The devil, as they say, is in the details–and few of those were made public in an interview the Silicon Valley company gave on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” program Sunday.

The company’s CEO, K.R. Sridhar, showed off a refrigerator-sized “Bloom Box” filled with fuel cells and designed to make electricity through a chemical process. The boxes can make energy anywhere, he said, and do so without giving off any emissions.

Already, a number of high-profile American corporations have begun testing the technology. A “60 Minutes” reporter, for example, visited facilities of eBay (EBAY), which has installed a number of Bloom Boxes; the e-commerce company put savings from the technology so far at $100,000. Others reported to have installed units include Google (GOOG) and Federal Express (FDX).

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:27 pm

'Heavy Rain' Taps Real-Life Anxieties for Massive Interactive Story

Acclaimed videogame designer David Cage turns everyday situations into deeply engaging gameplay in his Mature-rated title for PlayStation 3. With a 2,000-page script and 12 hours of motion-captured animation, Heavy Rain is an interactive wonder.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:22 pm

iPhone Game House ngmoco Raises $25 Million Series C, Buys Freeverse

Neil Young, the CEO of iPhone game startup ngmoco, wants to “amass enough scale” to accelerate “away from the pack.” He just raised a $25 million series C round and acquired Freeverse, another top iPhone game developer, to help ngmoco keep moving forward. The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners, and existing shareholders Kleiner Perkins, Norwest Venture Parters, and Maples Investments also participated. The new round brings the total raised to $40.6 million.

The startup consistently pumps out new iPhone games which have been downloaded millions of times. Two of its games alone—TouchPets and Eliminate—have been installed 9 million times, and hundreds of thousands of people play every day. Last year, ngmoco switched to free-to-play games with in-app purchases for virtual goods through its Plus+ social game network.

All of Freeverse’s games, such as Skee-Ball, Flick Fishing, Flick Bowling, and Moto Chaser, are paid apps. Skee-Ball is the No. 4 ranked paid app in the App Store. But Young plans to move the Freeverse games over to the free-to-play model, and then make money off in-app purchases. Young also acquired the $0.99 game Charadium from another game developer and plans to convert that over to free-to-play as well.

The model is working well for ngmoco. Young says TouchPets had “its biggest revenue day” last weekend, and its next two games, We Rule and GodFinger (a “social god game”), were designed specifically with the free-to-play model in mind. “On any given day, you have about 2% of your audience paying you money,” he says. He expects ngmoco to put out about about 20 new games this year, and the newly-acquired Freeverse team to nearly match that.

In addition to rolling out wave after wave of new iPhone games, Young also plans to open up an SDK to ngmoco’s Plus+ system so that other developers can more easily tap into it. The Plus+ system can manage virtual goods payments, player-to-player messaging, and other social aspects of iPhone games.

CrunchBase Information

ngmoco

Freeverse

Information provided by CrunchBase

Source: TechCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:15 pm

MySQL's Influence On the GPL

An anonymous reader writes "Ex-MySQL'er Brian Aker goes into the history of MySQL and the GPL. His point is that MySQL used the GPL in an over-reaching manner; and now that MySQL is gone as an entity, and the campaigns are over, that the GPL may return to an accurate definition."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:12 pm

3G Too Slow? Sprint Will Offer 4G Phones This Year

Get ready for fourth-generation wireless data. Now that 4G networks are popping up around the country, it’s only a matter of time before 4G-compatible phones show up in stores. Like, how about this summer?

According to a Forbes report, Sprint aims to launch the first 4G phone this summer, much sooner than many analysts expected. HTC, which also brought us the Nexus One, will be making the handset, using Android as the software platform.

The announcement is a part of Sprint’s aggressive campaign to push its WiMax 4G network as an alternative to the much slower 3G networks currently used by other carriers.

4G, the forth generation of wireless networks, would provide speeds of up to 10 Mbps, making it much more enjoyable for things like streaming movies, downloading applications or multiplayer gaming. By comparison, 3G networks offer just 1-3 Mbps.

Sprint has been selling a number of other WiMax products such as PC card adapters, modems and hotspot devices like the Sprint Overdrive shown above. Dell recently announced its Mini 10 netbook with an option to upgrade to a WiMax-enabled card.

WiMax currently covers roughly 30 million people in 27 U.S. markets, and Sprint plans to add Boston, Houston, New York, San Francisco and Washington to the list by the end of the year. This would bring the total coverage up to 120 million people.

“2010 will be the year of 4G,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint’s CEO, in the company’s most recent earnings call, according to Forbes.

Carriers in Europe and Japan have been making a push for next-generation networks as well. More than 800 million people by the end of this year, and over a billion by the end of next, will be able to enjoy 4G worldwide.

Since coverage in the U.S. will still be spotty when the Sprint phone arrives, it will automatically switch to Sprint’s regular 3G network in places where 4G isn’t yet available.

Verizon’s 4G network, based on Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology instead of WiMax, is set to roll out later this year.

Photo: Dylan Tweney/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:09 pm

First DC-DC Converter MOSFETs Using Toshiba Seventh Generation High Speed Process Achieve Lower Resistance and Gate Charge

IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC)*, a committed leader that collaborates with technology companies to create breakthrough designs, has launched its latest generation power MOSFETs for synchronous DC-DC conversion.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:02 pm

tw telecom to Present at Investor Conferences

LITTLETON, Colo., Feb. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- tw telecom inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:01 pm

Twitter Sees 600 Tweets-Per-Second #OMG #YeahButWheres TheBusinessModel [Digital Daily]

In 2007, Twitter broadcast about 5,000 tweets per day. Just three years later, it is broadcasting some 50 million–about 600 tweets per second. (Click chart above to enlarge.)

In a TPS report filed today (TPS here referring to “tweets per second” and not “Test Program Set” from the movie “Office Space.” Ha ha, what a funny coincidence.) Kevin Weil of the Twitter analytics team points out that tweets grew 1,400 percent last year. He also notes that the 50-million-tweets-per-day figure does not include posts generated by accounts that have been identified as sources of spam.

Further evidence that the microblogging service has pushed through the growth ceiling it hit last fall. As I noted last week, the latest metrics from comScore (SCOR), show Twitter.com with 73.5 million unique visitors in January, up eight percent from the 65.2 million who visited in December 2009.

Source: All Things Digital | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm

Red Bull, Verizon Tweets Run Afoul of Olympics Rules [Voices]

By Emily Steel, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Neither Red Bull nor Verizon Communications (VZ) are Olympic sponsors, but both have posted items about the Vancouver Games on Twitter and Facebook.

That is a violation of Olympics rules, which say advertisers that don’t pay the tens of millions of dollars an official sponsorship costs may not associate themselves with the Games or the athletes during the events or the weeks surrounding them.

“RT @henryyamamoto: Here’s an idea for next Winter Olympics: Get @RedBull to produce it instead of some ‘committee’ or NBC Sports #olympics,” Red Bull posted to Twitter last Wednesday, retweeting the post of another Twitterer.

“We’re rooting for you @LindseyVonn @Shaun_White @GregBretzz and @Drahlves in the 2010 Winter #Olympics!” Red Bull posted the previous week, cheering on the U.S. ski and snowboard athletes it endorses.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:56 pm

DTS 4Q net income increases 61 percent (AP)

AP - DTS Inc., which licenses audio technology for consumer electronics, said Monday its fourth-quarter earnings rose 61 percent, helped by sales of Blu-ray disc players and video game consoles.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:40 pm

Expo offers free registration for 2011 show (Macworld.com)

Macworld.com - It seems like I was walking out of Moscone Center at the end of the 2010 edition of Macworld Expo just the other day. (It was actually about nine days ago.) But organizers of the annual Mac trade show have already opened up registration for next year’s event. And for the next two weeks, registration for Macworld Expo 2011 is free.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:39 pm

Fotolia Lets You Animate Photos With Flixtime

Microstock photography giant Fotolia is launching a new site, called Flixtime, that allows users to create simple video slideshows. Similar to the simplicity of Animoto, Flixtime allows you to produce 60-second videos from your photos easily and quickly.

Once you register for a free account, you’ll be upload your own photos or stock photos from Fotolia’s selection of images. You can also upload your own music, or choose from Fotolia’s stock music collection. And you can add text to any slide as well.

Once you create a video, you can share the file to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other destinations. You can also choose to download the file to your computer for further editing. Check out the video I created in a matter of minutes here. Flixtime actually offers a considerable amount of stock photography and music to choose from; so it’s easy to make a pretty slideshow combining your own photos and Fotolia’s offerings. The music is powered by AudioMicro, a music startup that helps license stock audio files.

In my opinion, Flixtime is a more basic version of Animoto, which has been steadily ramping up its offerings. Fotolia took a massive round of investment last year from TA Associates last year and has been steadily growing its userbase. It reached one million registered users and five million images for sale last February, introduced microstock video in April, hired an iStockPhoto co-founder in May, and launched a royalty-free photo site called PhotoXpress. The site also rolled out an add-in ribbon for Microsoft Word and PowerPoint 2007 that gives users instant access to the company’s vast library of images and vectors from within the application.

CrunchBase Information

Fotolia

Information provided by CrunchBase

Source: TechCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:37 pm

Apple’s A4 chip a billion dollar investment? That can’t be right

There’s a story going around right now that the development costs for Apple’s A4 chip, which powers the iPad, might be as high as a billion dollars. Let’s not get carried away here. Apple licensed the CPU and GPU from ARM, and the A4 shares a lot of elements with the Tegra 2. The billion dollar investment here is for designing a chip “from scratch.” Is that really what happened here?

I don’t pretend to know what the process was for creating the A4, or Tegra 2, or any other ARM-licensed system on a chip. But a billion dollars is a hell of a lot of money to put into R&D for a single device. Apple would have to sell four or five million devices just to break even. I don’t know, maybe they really did spend this kind of money. The estimate just seems a bit high to me, and it comes off as sort of arbitrary in the NYT article. It seems that the bulk of the design work must have been done by ARM — which was why Apple licensed from them instead of leaning on their own PA Semi IP. I’d take this particular story with a grain of salt.

[via Apple Insider]

Source: CrunchGear | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:30 pm

An Interview With Cybersecurity Czar Howard Schmidt

Trailrunner7 writes to tell us that US cybersecurity czar Howard Schmidt recently gave an interview where he discusses his career and what he sees as the priorities of the positions. "Howard Schmidt has been involved in just about every aspect of the security industry during his career. After stints in the Air Force and at Microsoft, he served as a cybersecurity advisor to George W. Bush. Now, after heading back to the private sector for several years, he's been appointed to serve as President Obama's security advisor."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:29 pm

Genes Allow Humans to Recognize Faces

The ability to recognise faces is largely determined by your genes, according to new research at UCL (University College London).
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:21 pm

Google Android Is Doomed to Self-Destruct - PC World

Techtree.com

Google Android Is Doomed to Self-Destruct PC World Google Android's flood of options should be a good thing -- but it's really a self-destruction derby in action. Simply put, it's too much of a good thing. Every few days, another Google Android device is announced, as hardware makers and wireless ... Google Earth Lands for Nexus One, Other Android PhoneseWeek Google Earth for Android ReleasedPC Magazine Win A Free Ticket To Google I/O 2010Washington Post Techtree.com -Top Tech Reviews -Gadgetrepublic all 79 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:12 pm

CIC Mourns Death of Board Member Dr. Garry Meyer

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Feb. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Communication Intelligence Corporation ("CIC") (OTC Bulletin Board: CICI) announced today that Board of Directors member Garry S. Meyer, PhD died on January 20, 2010 at the age of 59. Dr.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:08 pm

That’s Apple’s New Data Center? Where’s the Giant Glass Cube? [Digital Daily]

When plans for it were first announced, Apple’s North Carolina data center was described as “as big as they come” and in more colloquial parlance, as “big-assed.” And that is truly the case, as this brief aerial video posted to YouTube demonstrates.

The facility, which is nearly five times the size of Apple’s giant data center in Newark, Calif., isn’t exactly pretty, but as far as efforts to house 500,000 square feet of data center space in a single building go, it’s pretty impressive. And it does have a bit of Area 51 about it, particularly since Apple (AAPL) hasn’t yet revealed its true purpose. That said, it’s most likely related to some infrastructure-intensive cloud-computing initiative.

Source: All Things Digital | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:01 pm

MSIE6, blah blah blah

Sweet merciful fates, the continued existence and use of Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 is getting as much publicity as the Linux-vs-Windows debate. If you’re interested in this story, and we all know you’re interested or these stories wouldn’t keep popping up, there’s an interesting examination of the reasons for MSIE6’s prolonged existence online for your perusal. The usual suspects — slow-moving change-averse mega-corporations on protracted refresh cycles, cheapskates, and ignorance — are rounded out by at least one surprising addition.

Read the whole scoop, and say a quiet prayer for the little browser that keeps on keepin’ on.

Source: CrunchGear | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

New English/Arabic Translation Site Hopes To Promote Citizen Diplomacy

Wired has mention of a new site that hopes to encourage a grassroots "citizen diplomacy" movement by combining English/Arabic translation software with a Facebook-style meeting place. "Meedan, which officially launches Monday, lets users post stories and comments in English and have them automatically translated into Arabic, or the opposite. People who don’t share a common language can have an online discussion in near real time. The name, appropriately, means 'gathering place' or 'town hall'; in Arabic. Think of it as a social network filled with people you don't know, but want to understand."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 22 Feb 2010 | 2:46 pm

Study: Tropics are Suitable for Small Family Farms

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Conventional wisdom among many ecologists is that industrial-scale agriculture is the best way to produce lots of food while preserving biodiversity in the world's remaining tropical forests.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 22 Feb 2010 | 2:35 pm

Scientists Create Tiny RNA Molecule With Big Implications

An extremely small RNA molecule created by a University of Colorado at Boulder team can catalyze a key reaction needed to synthesize proteins, the building blocks of life.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 22 Feb 2010 | 2:30 pm

Quick Look: Motorola Devour

Here’s a quick look at the Motorola Devour, the brand new MotoBLUR from Verizon. While my video doesn’t look nearly as good as Megan Fox’s, below, I’m here to tell you that this is another winner from Motorola.

Full review later this week.

Source: CrunchGear | 22 Feb 2010 | 2:30 pm

AK Tweens Announces Dove(R) go fresh Deodorant and Matching Body Mist as Premier Sponsor of AllyKatzz Tween Town Hall Meeting

NEW YORK, Feb.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 22 Feb 2010 | 2:27 pm

American Kids Try to Break Guinness World Record

NEW YORK, Feb. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Children all over the US are preparing to join over a million students from across the world and break the Guinness World Record for the largest online math competition during World Math Day on March 3.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 22 Feb 2010 | 2:21 pm

Advisory to Securities Analysts, Investors and News Media: UTC Will Webcast its Annual Analysts and Portfolio Managers Meeting

HARTFORD, Conn., Feb. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX) will broadcast its annual analysts and portfolio managers meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m. ET Friday, March 12, 2010.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 22 Feb 2010 | 2:04 pm

Unisys and Bank of Taiwan Continue Relationship for Application Outsourcing and ClearPath Mainframes

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Feb. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) today announced that its Taiwanese subsidiary has received a new two-year contract from the Bank of Taiwan.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 22 Feb 2010 | 2:00 pm

Xilinx Picks 28nm High-Performance, Low-Power Process to Accelerate Platforms for Driving the Programmable Imperative

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Xilinx Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 22 Feb 2010 | 2:00 pm

Rising Sea Level Claims Retracted

A 2009 claim that sea levels would rise up to 32 inches by the end of the century, is being retracted, as the original report’s author says the real estimate is still not known.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 22 Feb 2010 | 1:45 pm

Study: Husbands Contribute to Wives' Depression

In the United States, nearly 10 percent of the population suffers from a depressive disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. While the causes of depression vary, a new study at the University of Missouri reveals that marital hostility is a contributing factor.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 22 Feb 2010 | 1:40 pm

Simple wireless live view monitor lets you control your DSLR from a distance

You can get this functionality in an iPhone app (onOne), but it probably kills your battery, and besides: in photography, more accessories equals more glory. So check out this little doodad — it hooks onto your camera’s hot shoe and beams a signal to a little LCD monitor, where you can adjust aperture, take an exposure, and so on.

The only trouble is that it doesn’t seem widely available, and I’m not really sure what the resolution is. The website claims 960×240, but that can’t be right. Looks like a handy and simple little thing, though at $335 it isn’t cheap. There are surely other versions of this that I’ve just never sought out — maybe it’s time for a little light googling.

[via Red Ferret and Dvice]

Source: CrunchGear | 22 Feb 2010 | 1:30 pm

In the Future, One CF Card Will Hold 200 Years’ Worth of Porn

Someday, you’ll be able to fit as much data in a small, square CompactFlash card as AT&T carries on its entire network in a week.

In theory at least, version 5 of the CompactFlash standard will allow CF cards to hold 188 petabytes of data. By comparison, that’s equivalent to 188,000 one-terabyte drives, sufficient capacity to contain 2.7 million hours of HD video (two centuries’ worth of the porn industry’s annual output) or more than 7 days’ worth of AT&T’s daily traffic, which currently averages 18.7 petabytes. With that kind of storage, you’d only need five CF cards to stash all of the data currently stored on all the hard drives in home computers in the state of Minnesota. (Data comparisons courtesy of UCSD’s 2009 How Much Information? study.)

CompactFlash cards are the chunky, heavy-duty memory cards that would have gone obsolete years ago except for the fact that they’re used in high-end cameras. All pro photographers use them, so all professional SLR cameras support the technology, in a vicious circle that will keep the technology alive long after everyone else has forgotten it. Unless, of course, they need to stash massive amounts of data.

The current standard, CompactFlash 4.1, limits the cards to a relatively paltry 137 GB, due to the limits of its addressing scheme. In practice, the largest CF card you can currently buy is 64 GB, but that’s still larger than the largest SDHC card, which is 32 GB. The theoretical maximum of the latest SD standard, SDXC, is 2 terabytes, although no one uses these cards yet.

The new CF standard uses 48-bit addressing, which raises the theoretical memory limit to an eye-popping 188 petabytes. We figure it will be quite a while before storage technology comes close to pushing that limit, however.

And by then, you’ll probably have exabytes of ultra-high-definition 3-D home videos that you’ll want to keep track of, meaning that a paltry petabyte card will look just as puny as a 1-GB card does today.

(Via DPReview)

Photo: Wikimedia Commons, poorly butchered by the author

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 22 Feb 2010 | 1:09 pm

Developing Nations Risk E-Waste Crisis - InformationWeek

Telegraph.co.uk (blog)

Developing Nations Risk E-Waste Crisis InformationWeek Unless proper electronic-waste recycling is established in developing countries, they will face serious environmental and public health consequences, a United Nations report says. The urgency in addressing e-waste disposal is driven ... UN Warns Developing Countries of Growing E-wastePC World E-waste flooding developing countries, warns UNEP reportJakarta Post UN steps up efforts on e-wasteV3.co.uk TG Daily -NewsFactor Network -UN News Centre all 323 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 22 Feb 2010 | 12:46 pm

Antarctic Peninsula Ice Shelves Disappearing

Ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change. This could result in glacier retreat and sea-level rise if warming continues, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands worldwide.Research by the U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 22 Feb 2010 | 12:45 pm

DNA Tells 'Global Story' Of Human History

In recent years, DNA evidence has added important new tools for scientists studying the human past.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 22 Feb 2010 | 12:40 pm

webOS 1.4 update coming on Thursday?

Back at CES in January, Palm announced that webOS 1.4 and all of its video recording talents would be hitting Pres and Pixis around the world starting in “February”.

Flash forward a few weeks, when a supposed snapshot of an internal Sprint scheduling sheet indicated that it would all start rolling out on February 15th. February 15th has, of course, come and gone — and our Pres remain un-updated.

Fear not, however – if the rumor mill doesn’t fail us a second time, we can still expect the update to roll out this month.

With only 6 days left in the month, any stab in the dark has a pretty good shot of being correct. However, the guys over at PreCentral say they’ve been tipped by a Verizon know-all who says that the roll-out has been pushed back to this Thursday, February 25th.

Keep your eyes peeled and start tapping that “Update” app come Thursday, and be sure to let us know when it goes live.

Source: MobileCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 12:38 pm

Mass Media's Role In Climate Change Skepticism

Mass media have been a key vehicle by which climate change contrarianism has traveled, according to Maxwell Boykoff, a University of Colorado at Boulder professor and fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.Boykoff, an assistant professor of environmental studies, presented his research today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 22 Feb 2010 | 12:13 pm

Travel Light and Stay Connected on the Road

There's no need to lug around a 10-pound laptop while traveling. A new breed of laptops offer the lighter load of a netbook, but retain the features of their larger brethren. New travel-ready machines also boast new features that make life on the road a breeze.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 22 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

King Tut’s Many Curses

New research shows that Egyptian pharaoh King Tutankhamun had a rough life: he suffered from malaria and deformed feet, two of his children were stillborn, and he died at the age of 19. Scientific analysis suggests that despite his status ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:52 am

Acer Liquid e comes to North America by way of Rogers Wireless

Acer recently announced its growing presence in the Android realm and Rogers was quick to snap up the manufacturer’s latest device – the Liquid e. If you can get past the drug-related name, the handset doesn’t seem to sound so bad on paper.

When the Liquid e hits Rogers, it will be the first Android 2.1 device in Canada assuming the Motorola Milestone doesn’t get the update first. And while Acer doesn’t have the reputation in the mobile handset business like Motorla does, the Liquid e does have a faster Snapdragon processor and holds its own everywhere else, albeit a smaller screen.

Rogers doesn’t have an official release date and no pricing, either. So if you’re holding out for one of these, try to find something to pass the time until things get official.

[via Electronista]

Source: MobileCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:38 am

Development of Apple’s iPad Chip Estimated at $1B

Steve Jobs introduced not one, but two new products last month: the iPad and Apple’s custom made A4 chip. Analysts have yet to autopsy the chip to uncover its secrets, but even more interesting is what it takes for a company like Apple to manufacture its own chip: about $1 billion, according to The New York Times.

“Even without the direct investment of a factory, it can cost these companies about $1 billion to create a smartphone chip from scratch,” reports NY Times‘ Ashlee Vance.

That makes Apple’s $278 million acquisition of semiconductor manufacturer PA Semi look like pocket change. And hopefully Apple’s investment will pay off not just for the company, but also for iPad owners: The 1-GHz A4 chip, Apple promises, will help preserve the iPad’s battery for up to 10 hours of active use and one month of standby.

And considering the enormous cost of developing this chip, iPhone owners can have faith that the A4 will most likely appear in future iPhones. Maybe we’ll see an A4-powered iPhone debut this summer, and all our complaints about battery life will disappear. After that, all we’d have left to complain about is AT&T.

See Also:

• A Closer Look at Apple's New Tablet, the iPad
• iPad Estimated to Be Worth as Little as $220 in Parts
• Apple Video Shows iPad Flash Support, But Don't Believe It …
• With iPad, Apple Still Has a Fatal Attraction for AT&T
• Ten Things Missing From the iPad
• Hands-On With the Apple iPad

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:23 am

DUBMeNow Raises $2.8M for Mobile Business Card Sharing

“Bump is just a gimmick for young people” says DubMeNow CEO Manoj Ramnani. DubMeNow (“Dub” for short) is a real business, he implies, and he can prove it. Dub has been on a tear the last few months in all aspects of their business.

They’ve got real revenue: over $2.7M projected for this fiscal year. They’ve raised over $2.8 million in funding thus far, led by Syncom Ventures with other undisclosed angel investors participating. Furthermore, they have found traction in the education market and are soon-to-be deployed to over 750 Universities as a contact-sharing option for students.

Their mobile application, DubMeNow, has been downloaded nearly 1 million times – still dwarfed by the 7 million of their Y Combinator- and Sequoia-funded competitor, Bump. Bump and Dub are in a battle to become the de facto contact information-sharing application for mobile phones. Bump is clearly kicking ass in terms of users, and much of that is due to the love they’ve gotten from Apple and through PR. But Manoj doesn’t care – he argues that real revenue and partnerships are going to serve Dub better in the long-term. That statement may be suspect, but there’s no doubt that Dub is making headway.

Recently, Dub has created partnerships with DataTel and Moodle. DataTel is the 3rd largest ERP vendor for universities. Together, the two partnerships mean that over 1,000 universities will have access to Dub’s platform as a way of sharing contacts among students and faculty. Furthermore, they’ve announced partnerships with SXSW and Higher Logic, as a way for conference-goers to share information easily.

Dub was founded 19 months ago by a group of engineers who wanted to create a platform for users to share contact information. Their major product, originally available only on iPhone, launched less than 1 year ago. Founder and CEO Manoj Ramnani came to the US pursuing an MBA at George Washington University, and recently sold a mobile software services company.

Mobile business cards is a real problem and I definitely want to see some company – whether it be Dub or Bump – succeed. I’m sick of carrying around wads of paper in my pocket every time I go to an event, and then fumbling through the stack to figure out the e-mail address of that one person I want to talk to. That said, there’s a long way to go before we as a community standardize on one application – and it’ll be interesting to see which one becomes successful.

Source: MobileCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 11:00 am

Hackers hack goodies from the HTC Desire over to the Nexus One in no time flat

Back when we first got word that the HTC Desire was essentially a slightly upgraded Nexus One with a bit of customization on HTC’s part, we knew there wasn’t much to worry about for recent Nexus One purchasers; the very vast majority of the Desire’s upperhand was all in the software, which was bound to be hacked over eventually.

What we didn’t know, however, was just how fast it would happen.

The handsets not even released yet, but its goods from the Desire have already been stripped down and almost entirely ported to the Nexus One. Paul over at MoDaCo managed to dig up the ROM, and they’ve since been pushing out build-after-build, each with a bug fix here and a new feature there. HTC’s Sense UI is in place, Flash in the browser is working and, at this point, it seems like the lingering bugs won’t be lingering for long.

It’s nothing you’d want to dive into with a twitchy finger or a faint heart, but you can find all the necessary materials over here.

Source: MobileCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:59 am

Doctors Urge Choking Warning Labels for Food

Although federal law requires choking warning labels on certain toys, no mandate exists for food.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:47 am

Google Earth has landed for Android 2.1

When the Google Nexus One was announced, there were several cool new features unveiled for the device and Android 2.1: interactive wallpapers, 3D graphics and support for Google Earth. The latter wasn’t available at the time, and there was no date set, but it looks like it’s available on Android Market now.

If you have Android 1.5 or 1.6, don’t bother. Not to burst your bubble, but your device doesn’t have the resources needed to power such an intensive application. Users reporting the app’s availability have all been Nexus One owners, which means this is a 2.1-only app so far. DROID owners will have to wait for the 2.1 update, which seems to be taking longer than most would have wanted or expected.

There’s nothing official yet from the Google blog, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated when the announcement is official.

[via Android Guys]

Source: MobileCrunch | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:42 am

Friday News Feedbag Info for February 19th, 2010

If this is your first exposure to the Friday News Feedbag...we're glad to have you in the club. Welcome to Feedbag Nation, which stems from our weekly science news podcast that you can subscribe to here on iTunes and chat ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:31 am

Poverty During Early Childhood May Last a Lifetime

Children raised in poverty in their first five years are more likely to feel its effects well into adulthood.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:29 am

Jerusalem City Wall Possibly Built by Solomon Discovered

An ancient street was uncovered in Jerusalem earlier this month, revealing what commercial life was like in the Old City 1,500 years ago, and now archaeologists have hit a wall. In a very good way. A section of Jerusalem's city ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:20 am

U.S. to Return 3,000-Year-Old Pharaonic Sarcophagus to Egypt

U.S. authorities will return a beautifully painted 3,000-year-old coffin to Egypt, Egyptian Culture Minister Faruq Hosni said on Monday. Decorated with colorful religious scenes, the ornamented coffin contains the remains of a man called Imesy. Zahi Hawass, the secretary general ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 10:18 am

The mystery of the five missing iPad apps

FROM APPLETELL - In the marketing materials, there is a lot of empty space on Apple’s iPad screen, and it is missing five apps: Weather, Stocks, Clock, Calculator and Voice Memos. So, where did the apps go?
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Source: Gadgetell | 22 Feb 2010 | 9:49 am

The next generation of ad serving for online publishers

Today, we're announcing the next generation of ad serving technology for online publishers — DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP).

For the past few years, we've been investing in a suite of solutions — AdSense, ad-serving technology and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange — to help online publishers make the most money possible from their content, whether they sell advertising directly through their own sales force, through an ad network such as AdSense, or a combination of both.

For major online publishers — including social networks and online communities, entertainment sites, e-commerce sites and news sites — managing, delivering and measuring the performance of ads on their websites can be a hugely complicated process. A publisher's ability to manage this process can have a significant impact on how much money they make from their online content.

Imagine you're a major online publisher with a popular global surfing website and an ad sales team. Every second of every day, you have difficult decisions about what ads to show and how to measure their relative performance. For example:

• In the same ad space, a surfboard wax advertiser may want to run a static image ad for your Australian readers, while an airline offering flights to Hawaii may want to run an expandable interactive ad for your American readers.
• A fast-food restaurant wants to run their burger ads before noon and their pizza ads in the afternoon.
• You've sold 10 different surfboard makers a million ad slots at slightly different prices; now you have to allocate them across your various webpages to fulfill all these orders over the next two weeks.
• One of your surfing tournament reviews is linked to by a popular news site and you have a surge in traffic. Your sales team couldn't predict this, so you're potentially left without any ads for thousands of readers. You want to fill this ad space by selling it via an ad network which has ads available.

This is really just scratching the surface. Managing ad space can involve faxes, emailed orders, the manual scheduling of different ad campaigns across multiple sites and difficult decisions about how to allocate ad space most effectively.

Major online publishers use ad serving technology to manage the complex process of how and when the ads they have sold appear on their websites. In recent years, we've invested significantly in our ad serving products — DoubleClick's DART for Publishers for large publishers and Google Ad Manager for growing publishers. Thousands of major online publishers use these products to serve billions of ad impressions every day.

But we see an opportunity to improve ad serving even further by combining Google's technology and infrastructure with DoubleClick's display advertising and ad serving experience. Since we acquired DoubleClick in March 2008, our engineering and product teams have been working with online publishers to tackle the obstacles that prevent them from maximizing revenues from their websites.

The upgraded DFP includes a wide variety of features that will help publishers to get the most value out of their online content:

• A new interface that has been completely redesigned to save time and reduce errors.
• Far more detailed reporting and forecasting data to help publishers understand where their revenue is coming from and what ads are most valuable.
• Sophisticated algorithms that automatically improve ad performance and delivery.
• A new, open, public API which enables publishers to build and integrate their own apps with DFP, or integrate apps created for DFP by a growing third-party developer community (apps under development today include sales, order management and workflow tools).
• Integration with the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange's "dynamic allocation" feature, which maximizes revenue by enabling publishers to open up their ad space to bids from multiple ad networks. Dynamic allocation is described in this document [PDF].

DFP comes in two flavors, tailored for different publishers' needs: DoubleClick for Publishers, for the largest online publishers, and DFP Small Business, a simple, free version designed for growing online publishers. We'll be upgrading current DART for Publishers publishers to DoubleClick for Publishers over the next year as we continue to add features and modules, and we'll be moving Google Ad Manager customers to DFP Small Business in the coming weeks.

To reflect our continued investment in DoubleClick's products, as well as the central role of DoubleClick's technology products within Google's display advertising business, we're also today unveiling some changes to the DoubleClick logos — including typeset changes, incorporating a new "by Google" theme and retiring the "DART" brand.

The upgraded DoubleClick for Publishers is a perfect example of our continuing innovation in this area, and we believe that it will add significant value to online publishers' content. You can read more about the features of the upgraded DFP on the DoubleClick blog and on the DFP website.

Posted by Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management

Source: The Official Google Blog | 22 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

Plaice Are Spotted (On The Inside)

Adapts to its surroundingsIn a study published in Pigment Cell & Melanoma Research, marine biologist Helen Nilsson Sköld and her colleagues show that the number of internal pigment cells has a direct link to the degree of transparency of the fish. Transparent fish can change color using their internal pigment cells, thus enhancing external skin pigmentation and their ability to adapt to the background colors of their surroundings.Bewildering display of colorMysteriously, plaice also have a high number of internal pigment cells in, for instance, the ear and brain and around their internal organs. Plaice however are not particularly transparent. The internal pigment cells of this fish cannot be seen easily from the outside, which makes its internal display of color somewhat bewildering.Unknown functions
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 22 Feb 2010 | 8:52 am

Zero to Hero: Five New NX Lenses Put Samsung in the Game

A Samsung press conference is two things: Packed with reporters (the lines to get in can be hundreds of yards long) and packed with products. This last is no surprise, as Samsung is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of anything that uses electricity.

Even so, I wasn’t quite expecting the number of lenses that formed just a small part of the Korean company’s PMA 2010 flood of products. The five chunks of glass are all destined to end up on the NX10 camera body throughout 2010 (and if you think there won’t be other - probably smaller - cameras in the NX range coming soon, you’re crazy).

The NX10 us the first of Samsung’s EVIL cameras, bodies with electronic viewfinders and interchangeable lenses. These have no mirrors inside, so they’re small, but they still use big imaging chips for better quality, less noisy pictures. They’re so hot right now.

The lenses can also be smaller, which means they need to be made especially for the new bodies. And as lenses are the most important part of any camera system, Samsung is popping them out like a chicken lays eggs. Here’s the list:

18-55mm ƒ3.5-5.6

20mm ƒ2.8 pancake

60mm ƒ2.7 macro

20-50mm ƒ3.5-5.6

18-200mm OIS ƒ3.5-6.3

It’s all fairly self explanatory, but I have a few thoughts. First, remember that the NX10 has an APS-C-size sensor, which gives a crop-factor of 1.5x. So while that Olympus and Panasonic’s 20mm lenses end up at a 35mm equivalent of 40mm (2x crop factor), this pancake is like a 30mm wide-angle, which makes the relatively slow ƒ2.8 maximum aperture normal for its focal length.

Second, these lenses join the three already announced at CES this year, one of which was a 30mm ƒ2 pancake (also a 50-200mm ƒ4-5.6 and an 18-55mm ƒ3.5-5.6). That lens is the real rival to the fast standard lenses from Panasonic and Olympus.

And third, these new lenses, which will start to show up in stores in the first half of this year, give NX buyers a pretty comprehensive lens system, running from 18mm (27mm equivalent) all the way up to 200mm (300mm equivalent), and everything longer than wide-angle has image stabilization inside.

Sure, there are gaps, but considering that the camera didn’t exist until about six weeks ago, it’s not bad going. That’s the advantage that comes of starting from scratch, and being the kind of company that makes everything from washing machines to cellphones (lots of factory space).

But being big isn’t all good. It means some things slip out that shouldn’t have. Take this snippet from the press release for these new lenses:

>Consumer research carried out by Samsung revealed that camera users want convenient and easy-to-use features which guarantee value and creative freedom through innovative concepts.

Meaningless.

Samsung Unveils Five New NX Lenses [Samsung]

See Also:

• CES 2010: Samsung Joins Rangefinder Fray With Large-Sensor NX10 …
• EVIL

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 22 Feb 2010 | 8:40 am

Falcon Rocket Rises

As shuttle Endeavour coasted through Central Florida’s balmy skies last night, what may become the astronauts’ next ride to space was poised on a launch pad a few miles away. Over the weekend, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, hoisted its ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 22 Feb 2010 | 8:11 am

Jerusalem City Wall From Tenth Century B.C.E. Found

Image Caption: Dr. Eilat Mazar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem archaeologist, points to the tenth century B.C.E. excavations that were uncovered under her direction in the Ophel area adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem. Credit: (Hebrew University photo by Sasson Tiram)
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 22 Feb 2010 | 8:09 am

Appletell reviews the Technocel PowerPak portable battery and home charger

FROM APPLETELL - Technocel’s Universal PowerPak offers a combination backup rechargeable battery pack and home charger with 10 power tips to accomodate a wide variety of devices.
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Source: Gadgetell | 22 Feb 2010 | 7:25 am

Hackers put Sense, Flash on Nexus One

Section: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile

Last week at Mobile World Congress HTC showed off their improvements to the Nexus One.  An upgraded trackpad, and the newest version of it’s Sense UI.  It only makes sense that as soon as the ROM for the new Sense was released the hackers at places like the XDA forums would make it work on the Nexus One.  This time it was the guys at Redmond Pie.

Somehow a very alpha release of the Sense ROM was leaked onto the Internet, so it was only natural for hackers/developers to pick it up.  It’s a complicated process, but should be familiar to anyone who has rooted and flashed a ROM to an Android phone before.  The result is a Nexus One running an alpha of the Desire’s Sense UI, complete with Flash 10.1.  Since it is an alpha release it can be a bit buggy, so more caution than typical rooting would be best.

Given the potential for bugs here, it might be best to hold off on flashing the ROM for now.  The Sense UI does look rather nice, but unless you have a spare Nexus One that isn’t your main phone, it’s probably not worth it. The question for some might end up being: do I care about my main phone being buggy if I can watch Hulu?  If you answer yes, then go for it.  Otherwise, just wait for the Desire like the rest of us, or for the hackers/developers to come up with a more stable version.

Read [Redmond Pie] via [Gizmodo]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 22 Feb 2010 | 6:19 am

Joby’s New Tripod Gear: Magnets and Balls

Man, Joby just keeps knocking out great products, and these two new tripod (or tripod-like) gizmos are no exception. First, the magnet-footed Gorillatorch has been turned into a camera holder, adding three metal-loving feet to the bendy, jointed legs of the Gorillapod. This means that along with the tricks of wrapping around almost any support and, erm, standing up, the new Gorillapod Magnetic can turn your camera into a giant, novelty fridge-magnet.

The second PMA show announcement is the Ballhead X, which sounds more like a porn-star than a camera accessory. It’s an anodized aluminum tripod ball-head which fits onto a Gorillapod and will support up to 5Kg (11.1 lb) of gear.

It might seem odd that you would want a ball-head on a flexible ‘pod, but, in addition to the Gorillapods not being that great for the fine-tuning of their positions, ball-heads are just way easier to use than any other kind. The Ballhead X also has an independent panning function, a quick-release plate and uses a standard screw connector so you can put it on pretty much any tripod available.

The Ballhead X costs $80 and the Gorillapod Magnetic is $25. Both are available now.

Ballhead X [Joby]
Gorillapod Magnetic [Joby]

See Also:

• Joby Gorillapod, Now for iPod Touch
• Hands-On With the Joby Gorilla Mobile
• Joby Gorrillatorch: Hands-Free, Go-Anywhere Flashlight
• Joby Puts a One Pound Gorilla in the Room
• CES: Joby Gorillapod Attaches Cameras to Anything

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:38 am

Samsung Takes On Canon with New High-End Compact

Samsung’s new TL500 compact comes with a fast, wide zoom lens, and goes straight for the throat of Canon’s G11.

The lens has a fairly pedestrian 24-70mm range (35mm equivalent), but the maximum aperture runs from ƒ1.8 to ƒ2.4. That means, at its fully-zoomed, dullest position, the lens lets in more light than the G11 with an ƒ2.8-4.5 range (itself not bad for a compact).

The similarities continue with RAW capture, a hot-shoe, a flip-out LCD (3-inch AMOLED vs. the Canon’s 2.8-inch LCD), a CCD sensor and a top ISO sensitivity of 3,200. Amazingly enough, Samsung also mimics the G11’s terrible 640 x 480 movie mode, with no HD video available. The TL500 also matches the G11 for megapixels, packing 10MP.

Judging from the pictures, it seems that Samsung has also, thankfully, included lots of manual controls in the form of knobs and dials. If the camera handles as well as the Canon, Samsung could have a winner: That lens alone beats the G11 into the ground.

Samsung Launches the TL500 [Samsung]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:09 am

Appletell reviews the Yamaha EPH-30 Headphones

FROM APPLETELL - The Yamaha EPH-30 headphones cost $40 and give you nice, nice sound for that price point. They block a lot of noise and, most importantly, push the tunes without distortion.
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Source: Gadgetell | 22 Feb 2010 | 5:02 am

Flying Panties to Buzz Tokyo Skies

File under “Only in Japan”. On March 6th, if you are in the Akihabara district of Tokyo and you look up, you’ll see hundreds of pairs of girls’ panties. No, you haven’t shrunken into a tiny, homoncular, up-skirt pervert. Instead, you will be “enjoying” the launch of a thousand ornithopters fashioned from underwear.

Ornithopters are flying machines which flap their wings instead of spinning a propellor, and these panty-copters are powered by rubber bands. You will be able to buy a kit and send your own pair of panties into the Tokyo skies. We’d suggest making your own, but the idea is a little too disgusting.

It’s a publicity stunt, of course, and it will promote Japanese manga cartoon Sora no Otoshimono (What Fell from the Sky). The ornithopters will be launched as part of a larger event, the Sky Festival, which takes place down Akihabara way on that day. The Sky Festival will also see thousands of other model flying machines buzzing the heavens. If you are these, take photos and send them in to the Gadget Lab, and we’ll post them here.

Rumors that used panty-thopters will be packaged by schoolgirls and sold in vending machines are unfounded.

Ornithopter flying or Panties?! Humor Japanese manga [Hobby Media. Thanks, Francesco!]

See Also:

• Grandmaster Flashed: Kasparov Attacked by Flying Penis-Copter …
• Chinese Farmer Builds His Own Flying Machine
• Terrify Your Pets With WowWee's Toy Ornithopter
• GeekKids & Ornithopters
• Build an Ornithopher
• Japanese Schoolgirl Watch: Pervert-Proof Panties
• The World's Weirdest Vending Machines
• Pervert Alert: Japanese IPhone Shutter Sound Cannot Be Switched …

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:38 am

Sigma’s ƒ1.4 Portrait Lens, Tailor-Made for Today

Sigma has announced a new portrait-tastic prime lens, the 85mm ƒ1.4 EX DG HSM, at the PMA show in Anaheim, California. It’s certainly not the only new product from Sigma, which has also launched updated compacts, re-released a DSLR (the SD15) and announced new lenses including an ultra-wide zoom, but it is the most telling of the company’s lens strategy.

The new super-fast 85mm has a nine-bladed aperture diaphragm, manual-focus override (meaning you can tweak the focus with a twist without having to flip a switch first) and a hypersonic focus motor for fast focussing. Sigma has realized that many pros and enthusiasts will almost always buy lenses from their camera maker, especially in the full-frame market. So it has taken a look at what us camera geeks want and tweaked its designs to give it to us.

Today, we buy these ultra-fast, ƒ1.4 lenses not for their light-gathering abilities (our high-ISO cameras take care of that) but for their shallow depth-of-field. Sigma designs its lenses to give great results when used wide open, whereas legacy designs only had these wide apertures as a last resort to get every drop of light onto the film. Those nine blades on the diaphragm also cater to modern photo-fashion, and the nice round hole they form should give great *bokeh*: the quality of out-of-focus highlights.

It’s interesting to see specialized lenses like this. And Sigma isn’t leaving out the users of crop-frame cameras out, either: the lens hood comes with a special extender to make it stick out a little bit further on APS-C bodies (although this could also, be taken to mean the lens is prone to flare).

The lens will come in Sigma, Sony, Nikon, Pentax and Canon mounts. Price and launch date to be announced.

Sigma releases 85mm 1.4 EX DG HSM [DP Review]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:54 am

Sony Fights Micro Four-Thirds With Lens-Changing Compact

Quality cameras are about to get a whole lot smaller. Sony has revealed its plans for 2010, and alongside updates to the DSLR line comes a new interchangeable-lens compact to compete against the Micro Four Thirds format. Sony is using a larger APS-C sensor, the size seen in most DSLRs.

The camera, which will come out under the Alpha brand used for its DSLRs, sits between the Olympus Pen and Panasonic GF1 — with their small bodies — and the Samsung NX10 with its larger sensor.

The mockup has typical Sony style: a flat slab with a rather chunky, comfortable-looking handgrip and a lens-hole. The only actual spec Sony has given is for the sensor, a newly developed Exmor APS HD CMOS that will also shoot video (AVCHD-format). It’ll come with a small, flat “pancake” prime lens, presumably giving a 40-50mm equivalent focal length.

This segment, the high-quality “EVIL” (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) compact, will surely take off this year. So far, Panasonic and Olympus have had it all to themselves with the purpose-made Micro Four Thirds format, and Samsung’s only effort so far is the too-big NX10. With Sony in the game, we hope to see some great lenses (Sony uses Carl Zeiss glass) and some aggressive pricing, like that seen with Sony’s high-end DSLRs.

We wonder what Canon and Nikon will do about this. They’re certainly aware of the demand (I spoke to Nikon at CES and was told that there have been a lot of people asking about an EVIL camera), and both companies can easily squeeze one of their great APS-C sensors into a small body. In fact, Nikon used to make the rather good S-series of rangefinders.

The problem is the lenses. The advantage for Panasonic is that it has no heritage of lenses, and was free to start from scratch with M4/3. Both Nikon and Canon are heavily invested in DSLR lenses, and pretty much any Nikon lens ever made will fit on today’s cameras. My guess is that this is the holdup, and that we’ll see a small range of compact, purpose-made glass along with new bodies, coupled with proper adapters that allow you to use legacy lenses with autofocus and auto-exposure intact.

At least I hope so. Right now I can use most lenses ever made, from any manufacturer, on my Panasonic GF1, with a cheap adapter. If we don’t get at least that, why will anyone bother to buy a different brand?

Press release [Sony]

See Also:

• 5 Reasons to Ditch Your Digital SLR
• Hands-On With Panasonic's Leica-Lite GF1
• Olympus Pen E-P1
• New Olympus Pen Adds Flash, Loses Good Looks
• Adapter Puts Nikon and Pentax Lenses on Micro Four Thirds Cameras

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:19 am

Sony Adds Fuel to Compact, Changeable-Lens Camera Trend

Sony joins Panasonic, Olympus and Samsung in planning a compact camera with a larger-than-usual image sensor and interchangeable lenses.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 22 Feb 2010 | 3:19 am

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