Readings: Oil, Lawyers, Math, Niall Ferguson, Big Lebowski, etc.

Milberg Lawyers Leave Jail, Hit Links, Slopes; Reflect on Life (Source) Consumers Buy More Efficient Refrigerators, but Keep the Old Ones Humming (Source) Will reclusive mathematician accept...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:46 am

Cell phones smuggled over the air in Scottish Jail with a crossbow

We've heard of cell phones smuggled into jails in the most imaginative ways; they have been found hidden in mens' undwear, stuffed inside a toad or a dead squirrel, in mayonnaise jars, in compost...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:15 am

Obama appeals to Iranian people in Internet video (AP)

AP - In a fresh appeal directly to the Iranian people, President Barack Obama says in an online video that the United States wants more educational and cultural exchanges for their students and better access to the Internet to give them a more hopeful future.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Mar 2010 | 3:07 am

The Virtualization Wars: Microsoft and Citrix v. VMware

Watch this battle unfold. The virtualization wars are just getting started. On one side we have Microsoft, which announced changes in its licensing structures this week. The change reflects an understanding...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Mar 2010 | 2:52 am

Google Launches 3D Driver Project For Chrome

CWmike writes "Google has launched a new project for Chrome that will let the browser run a wider range of 3D graphics content without downloading additional drivers. The open-source project, called ANGLE (Almost Native Graphics Layer Engine), seeks to let Chromium run WebGL content on Windows computers, wrote product manager Henry Bridge on the Chromium blog. WebGL is still-developing a cross-platform Web standard for accessing low-level 3D graphics hardware based on the OpenGL ES 2.0 API (application programming interface) that can be implemented directly in a browser without a plugin. 'ANGLE will allow Windows users to run WebGL content without having to find and install new drivers for their system,' Bridge wrote. Because ANGLE aims to use most of the OpenGL ES 2.0 API, it may help developers working on mobile and embedded devices, Bridge wrote. 'ANGLE should make it simpler to prototype these applications on Windows and also gives developers new options for deploying production versions of their code to the desktop.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2010 | 2:33 am

Reboot Gives a New Twist to Sabbath - TopNews United States

San Francisco Chronicle (blog)

Reboot Gives a New Twist to Sabbath TopNews United States Reboot, a non- profit organization, is giving a new meaning to Sabbath. Sabbath, which is traditionally observed by Jews as a day for rest and prayers, will now be furnished with a new connotation by Reboot. It is being hailed as a day when technology ... Group urges unplugging to take back SabbathCNN So Long! The New Take on the Old Sabbath Ritual of UnpluggingNew York Times (blog) National Day of Unplugging – Could You Do It?Twirlit Associated News Today (blog) -KGWN -KGO-TV all 24 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 Mar 2010 | 1:29 am

The FCC's National Broadband Paper Plan Gets a BoomTown Tour of the Nation's Capital! [BoomTown]

When I went to Washington, D.C. last week to visit the Federal Communications Commission on the occasion of its release of its National Broadband Plan, I was actually given a paper version in a giant binder.

Yes, a dead-tree copy of a federal government scheme to make the United States more digital!

And, at hundreds of pages, it weighed more than when I was lugging my kid around the nation’s capital when he was a baby.

Thus, my big idea to take the analog plan around and show it the sights of Washington, with a little help from some tourists.

Ever the most excellent PR dude, the FCC’s Mark Wigfield wrote me in an email:

“It would have been hard to take broadband.gov on a tour of D.C., so I think the binder served a useful purpose!…I would be remiss in not telling you that I think our new media team’s Web presentation of the plan is really fantastic and user-friendly :)”

Nice try, Mark, you decimator of forests!

In any case, here’s my video, including stops at the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the White House and the Smithsonian:

[ See post to watch video ]

(And you can also see the FCC’s NBP executive director Blair Levin trying to foist another paper plan on me in this interview about it.)

Source: All Things Digital | 20 Mar 2010 | 1:19 am

Science panel says Delta pumping restrictions are justified in California - Sacramento Bee

Los Angeles Times

Science panel says Delta pumping restrictions are justified in California Sacramento Bee A high-level science panel Friday concluded that federal rules that limit water diversions from the Delta to protect endangered fish are "scientifically justified," dealing a blow to south state water interests that had ... Scientists' report only intensifies delta debateLos Angeles Times Study backs efforts to save delta fishSan Francisco Chronicle National Academy of Sciences Committee Report Intensifies Delta DebateTopNews United States California Farmer -New York Times -Stockton Record all 183 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 Mar 2010 | 1:01 am

Switzerland: New Record Set for Speedy Protons - New York Times

National Geographic

Switzerland: New Record Set for Speedy Protons New York Times Scientists at CERN, the European nuclear research agency, announced Friday morning that they had accelerated beams of protons at the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, to energies of 3.5 ... Large Hadron Collider Breaks Energy Record—By 300%National Geographic LHC takes a step closer to full powerCNET Large Hadron Collider accelerates proton beams at 3.5 TeVThe Money Times Computerworld -TopNews United States -BBC News all 220 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 Mar 2010 | 1:00 am

"Moot" Working On Reboot of 4chan Platform

Hugh Pickens writes "Nick Bilton has an interesting interview with Christopher Poole, known online as 'Moot,' founder 4chan, a jumble of content, hosting anything from pictures of cute kittens to wildly disturbing images and language. Poole, now 22, started 4chan when he was 15 after he discovered a Japanese image-board Web forum called 2chan dedicated to anime. 'The code for 2chan was publicly available and I took it and translated it from Japanese to English using tools online and I threw it up on the Web and sent it out to 20 people,' says Poole. 'I wanted to keep with the 2chan naming and the URL for 3chan was taken at the time so I just jumped to the next number.' Although 4chan gets 8.2 million unique visitors every month, 600 million page loads per month, and 800,000 new posts a day, Poole is working on a new project to reimagine what an image board should be today using the current technologies available."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Mar 2010 | 11:22 pm

An Enviable Post Office in Ghana

This is music made by four postal workers as they cancel postage! When I listen carefully, I think I can actually hear the spring mechanisms as the stamps hit the ink. I love it as an example of music...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Mar 2010 | 10:53 pm

An Enviable Post Office in Ghana

This is music made by four postal workers as they cancel postage! When I listen carefully, I think I can actually hear the spring mechanisms as the stamps hit the ink. I love it as an example of music turning what is normally seen as a boring, repetitive task into something this joyful.

The song was originally recorded in 1975 at the University of Ghana by James Koetting and appeared on a cd accompanying the book Worlds of Music, but you can download the whole clip here. Thanks to Bernie Krause and Anthropologist Steven Feld for helping me track this one down.

Toronto Star: Jeremy Gutsche on Home Decor Trends

CrunchGear PSA: Tech tax deductions

I did my taxes recently, and this is the first year that I actually bothered to deduct for all those things that I buy over the year for my job. It was confusing frankly, and I wish I’d read this article before I did it. Hopefully you’ll read this in time to do your deductions correctly, and not make the same mistakes I did (which caused me to miss out on several things I could have claimed).

I’m not going to go into all the grisly details, I’ll leave that to the person who actually wrote the article at PCWorld, but the gist of it is this: be careful what you deduct, and how you deduct it. And yes, you can deduct your internet connection (at least part of it) if you are a blogger. Be careful not to write off 100% value on items like computers or phones, as the IRS won’t believe you that you use those things strictly for business purposes.

ISC Releases the First Look At BIND 10

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Check-In Fatigue. Or, Why I’m Rooting For An All-Out Location War.

I didn’t have the same problems at SXSW this year that some people did. Was it too crowded at some events? Sure. But there were plenty of alternative things to do. Did some of the keynotes bomb? Yes. But there were plenty of other things to listen to. Did AT&T fail? No. Actually, they did an awesome job keeping the network up. Instead, I had a problem of a different kind: check-in fatigue.

Seeing as location was this year’s Twitter at SXSW, and seeing as I write a lot about location, I wanted to try to use as many of the services as I could during the actual conference. I drastically underestimated how much work that would actually be.

At first, I was using all of the services I had on my phone to check-in when I arrived at a place in Austin. This included: Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Brightkite, Burbn, MyTown, CauseWorld, Hot Potato, Plancast, and (at certain places) Foodspotting. Even with great AT&T service, this would take a solid 10 minutes or more to check-in to all of them. And it took even longer when I’d have to pause to explain to my friends what the hell I was doing on my phone all that time.

This was at every venue we stopped at. The situation simply wasn’t tenable.

By the second day, I had cut the services I would check-in to in half. It still wasn’t close to being something I would consider doing on a regular basis. By the end of my time in Austin, I was down to using only two services — yes, the two in the midst of the “war” — Foursquare and Gowalla.

Pretty much everyone I knew in Austin were also using both Foursquare and Gowalla to send out all their check-ins. And all seemed to agree: it was still too tedious to use even just two services to do the same thing. In the end, there should be only one.

And so it should be no surprise that a few companies are already working on a solution for this problem. One is by the creators of Brightkite, who managed to obtain the killer check.in domain name. The team showed me a preview of the app at a party one night, and I immediately knew it was exactly what I needed (see a preview of it here).

But there’s a problem with this solution too. Currently, Gowalla’s API is read-only, which means you actually can’t use another app to check-in to the service. I spoke with CEO Josh Williams a bit about this just prior to SXSW, and he noted that the main thinking behind this is to maintain the user experience Gowalla is looking for (a very Apple-like argument). But, he did say that eventually he thinks they will open up a two-way API — maybe once they have time to create some best practices documentation, he noted.

Another problem is that currently each of these check-in services has their own places database. That means that a place on Foursquare may be slightly different than a place on Gowalla, even though they’re technically the same place. Worse, there are plenty of duplicates for some venues since people are allowed to create their own. Check.in works around this place problem by doing a look-up on each service and letting you pick the correct check-in spot. But it’s a bit slow, and still seems rather tedious.

A better solution would be for the various services to adopt a standard for places. The Activity Streams group is working on such a concept. Yahoo may also be able to implement such a system on top of its WOEID system. Of course, any service that adopts such a standard would be risking at least part of their business since these place databases are one of the keys to each service.

Meanwhile, Facebook is thinking about aggregating data from both Foursquare and Gowalla for its own upcoming location implementation. Might that be the one location stop to rule them all (of course, the writing back to Gowalla would still likely be an issue)? Not if Twitter has anything to say about it.

I love that all these startups are emerging around location right now (at least a dozen more have emailed me just since I’ve been back from SXSW). But I’m starting to worry that this is going to turn into a repeat of the social wars, where we all have 15 different profiles we constantly have to update across a range of networks.

During our Realtime Crunchup last year, I brought up this issue during our panel on location. All the players on stage (including Twitter, Foursquare, Hot Potato, Google Latitude, GeoAPI, and SimpleGeo) seemed to want to say that they could all get along and play nicely together for the betterment of location as a whole. I didn’t buy it then, and I’m definitely not buying it now.

From a business perspective, it doesn’t make sense for these guys to all play nicely with one another and make it so you don’t have to use their services. The need to take steps to ensure that you will use their service, and will do so instead of a rival service. That’s the way it works, and that’s the way it has always worked. And that’s why it’s a war. Right now, it’s just the early stages where all sides are arming themselves. Soon, they’ll try to kill one another. And that may not be such a bad thing.

[photo: flickr/intagiblearts]

CrunchDeals: Get an ioSafe Solo for $229.99

ioSafe is running a great deal with Costco right now, you can buy their ioSafe Solo (which John reviewed) for a great price, and also get an additional year of data recovery for free. The drive is currently on sale for $229.99 (ordered online), and is regularly priced at $259.99 and doesn’t normally include the additional year of data recovery. Having personally seen one of these set on fire, I’m seriously considering picking one up, and you should too.

Now with more scum

Now with more scum

V2 Technology Announces Video Enhanced All-Communication-in-One Server for SMB Market

V2 Technology Announces Video Enhanced All-Communication-in-One Server for SMB Market

Behold the Clicker: the ultimate lazy man device

It’s fairly easy to find exactly when most Americans started to get fat. All you have to do is go back to the 1950’s. Some would say this is due to our fast food lifestyle, people spending too much time in front of the TV instead of running from animals, or even possibly a plot by Colonel Sanders. I think it’s directly related to the invention of the remote control. Now, there’s even less reason to get up off the couch thanks to the latest invention: The Clicker.

The Clicker is a 9-function learning remote with one important difference. It has a built in bottle opener. Now, after you train your dog to go and get you a beer out of the fridge, you no longer have to fumble in your pocket, or on the side table for an opener. You’ll know exactly where it is. Unfortunately you can’t be lazy if you want to order one though, as the website doesn’t have an electronic store. There isn’t even a price listed, just a phone number. You can download the instructions on how to program your new remote/bottle opener though.

Nortel completes sale of ethernet business; chief restructuring officer steps down

The GigaPan Epic Pro is now shipping to eager photographers

The GigaPan Epic Pro was the Gigapan we were waiting for it. It’s, well, professionally epic and capable of using nearly any DSLR camera/lens available thanks to its large magnesium chassis. It was originally going to start shipping sometime in April, but apparently something changed because we just got word from the company itself that its available now.

Too bad the somewhat high, but understandable, $895 price didn’t change. Probably more than a few photographers would have rather seen a bit shaved off that rather than the shipping date.

Music biz insiders say Sony-Jackson deal makes sense (Reuters)

Microsoft Updates Bing iPhone App and Removes It from All International iTunes Stores

Tesla's Roadster Sport Zips the Light Fantastic

Weekend Reading: Rework, by Fried and Hansson

Tesla's Roadster Sport Zips the Light Fantastic

F-35 fighter fleet's price may be double forecast

DayStar Technologies Announces 2009 Fourth Quarter and Year End Financial Results

DayStar Technologies Announces 2009 Fourth Quarter and Year End Financial Results

A cornucopia of Apple lawsuits

Apple doesn’t like HTC, not one bit. In fact, Apple recently filed a lawsuit against the Taiwan-based company, alleging that it has infringed 20 iPhone-related patents. This has already been discussed to death, but it gives us an opportunity to look at some of Apple’s other forays into the world of lawsuits. It’s terribly exciting.

So yeah, CNET did the hard work, and I’m merely highling the items that caught my eye.

• Psystar. This is probably the most famous lawsuit in the past few years. Pretty much a flawless victory for Apple.

• Nokia. Oh, Apple on the other end of a lawsuit? Hmm. Nokia says Apple infringed a number of its patents with the iPhone. Nokia sues Apple which then sues HTC. Mind = blown.

• Microsoft and HP. Oh dear, it’s a battle royale over user graphical user interfaces. Apple basically got its teeth kicked in on this one.

Flickr

Sprint Moment and Hero to get Android 2.1 in “the coming weeks” [Updated!]

See that image above? It’s notable for two reasons:

1. I’m fairly confident it takes the much coveted title for “Hardest to read leaked document ever”.
2. It, in all of its tiny text, confirms that the Sprint HTC Hero and Samsung Moment will be upgraded to Android 2.1 soon.

Update: We’ve now got a more legible picture and a full transcription after the jump.

The wonderful guys over at AndroidCentral whipped out their electron microscopes and did the hard transcription work for us. While the majority of it is just the general “Tell our customers that our service is superior to EVERYONE!” internal propaganda, there lies a pair of gems right around the middle section: “Let your customers know we are actively working on having the Android 2.1 platform available to our Hero and Moment customers over the coming weeks.” and “Look for more information coming in April about Android 2.1 platform for Hero and Moment.”

So there you have it, folks – more information is coming in April. I can’t even imagine how many people are happy about this news (Hi Carol!), given that people have been asking for an update to the Hero since roughly 1996 and that the Samsung Moment would be an absolutely killer handset when paired with Android 2.1.

Update: Want something a little more legible? Our buddy Joecrack305 of Cognizantphotos just sent a much better screen cap our way. Check it out:

Android 2.1 platform for Hero and Moment

Specialists: All
Customers: All

What you need to know:

• With all the anticipation of Nexus One joining the Sprint Android family of great devices, customers with the HTC Hero™ and the Samsung Moment™ with Google™ may wonder about the Android 2.1 platform that supports Nexus One.

What you need to do:

• We know that technology has enabled greater productivity and spontaneity in our lives, and because of this we have become very dependent on staying connected. Customers don‘t only expect more from their wireless phones — they demand it.
• Let your customers know we are actively working on having the Android 2.1 platform available to our Hero and Moment customers over the coming weeks.
  Look for more information coming in April about Android 2.1 platform for Hero and Moment.

And don’t forget:

• The HTC Hero™ and the Samsung Moment™ with Google™ are superior devices.
• Sprint is the only national U.S. carrier to offer HTC Hero, and it picked up top honors as Best Mobile Handset at the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
  About.com readers have also nominated HTC Hero as their favorite smartphone for the 2010 Reader’s Choice Awards.

Thanks Joecrack305!

Artists Get Their Geek On to Celebrate Yuri's Night

Bad Magic Comic Mysterius Makes Good Tech Satire

MGM could go it alone if bids disappoint -sources

MGM could go it alone if bids disappoint -sources

MGM could go it alone if bids disappoint -sources

The Man Corporations Love and Xenophobes Hate

During my recent trip to India, I flew down to Bangalore for one reason: To meet N.R. Narayana Murthy. Murthy is the co-founder, executive chairman and former CEO for 21 years of Infosys, the first Indian company to go public on Nasdaq and effectively the company that began the $30 billion Indian IT outsourcing market.

Murthy’s idea was so successful that it quickly became controversial—not only within the United States where some Americans feel Indians are “stealing jobs,” but also in India where many are concerned about a tech economy that doesn’t make anything. I wanted to meet with Murthy, because in many ways he’s the best person to address what Indians at home and abroad are facing and where Indian entrepreneurship goes from here.

Here are a few highlights from our meeting:

His Day Job. Murthy thought he was stepping down from Infosys back in 2002, but he couldn’t fully let go. As such, he still works pretty much full time for the company, traveling to meet with customers and running a lot of the company’s mentoring and training programs. The more surprising aspect of his job: He personally signs off on the architecture of every building on each one of Infosys’ campuses that employ some 17,000 people around the world. The one we were sitting in was spread of eight acres and had some remarkable buildings, including one that looked like the Luxor casino in Las Vegas.

I asked why this was a top priority—after all, many Valley campuses are plush but from an architecture standpoint look about the same. He said when GE and other American multinationals were starting to come into his business everyone thought Infosys would lose the local talent war. So Murthy studied why people want to work at a particular place. One of the results was the comfort and design of the facilities. That was in 1994 when Infosys was designing the very building we were sitting in as we had this conversation. “I’ve been in charge of every building since– all over the world,” he says.

Hurting or Helping Local Entrepreneurship? Given exactly how plush Murthy and his colleagues have worked to make Infosys, has he indirectly hurt Bangalore’s entrepreneurship scene by making the risk of leaving so daunting? He smiled when I asked this and said, “We may have unwittingly. But I do feel like the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and kicking in Bangalore.”

Further, I asked about Bangalore’s Zippo-flipping, free-spending generation of young techies who’ve graduated to a huge wave of multinational jobs that pay them far more than their parents ever made, in many cases more than the rest of their families combined. Murthy didn’t deny that that instant-gratification, “gimmie” contingent was strong in the city he helped build, economically speaking. But he blames the Internet and the mass-cross-pollination of Western pop culture, not the bigger paycheck from companies like his.

“We are moving towards a uniform, global culture with an intense competitive spirit and an intense desire for instant gratification,” he says. “But I have a firm belief that each generation is better than the previous one. The Indian entrepreneurs today are more daring than we were.” (This from a man who became a capitalist after after hitchhiking across communist Eastern Europe and getting thrown in jail for chatting up someone’s girlfriend on a train. “More daring” is a tall order, young Indian techies.)

Is India’s Tech Community Too Addicted to Services? Clearly, services has been a great business for Infosys and the hundreds of dollar-millionaires and even more rupee-millionaires that the company’s generous stock program has created. But a lot of Indian CEOs and investors complain that in most cases services-based tech businesses are a great way to get revenues quick, but not a way to build a huge, high-growth business. There’s a big question of whether India’s tech sector has a worrying lack of product-building know-how.

Murthy says it’s a progression. “India missed the industrial revolution, but Indians had intelligence,” he says. “We had to make do with pen and paper. We were always forced to look at the abstract. What is happening in India today is the creation of jobs. Let’s create jobs as long as they are legal and ethical, it doesn’t matter, as long as we make money. The time will come for creating products. I wouldn’t lose sleep over this. If we create enough jobs we’ll raise the confidence of the youngsters and they’ll create products.”

India’s Infrastructure. Here’s something it’s hard for even Murthy to be upbeat about: India’s shoddy physical infrastructure. Murthy has traveled the world and it’s frustrating that so much money has poured into the country he loves, and yet, the infrastructure is still so shockingly bad.

There is progress—Infosys for instance has benefited from a new overpass that cuts down on the drive to the campus by more than thirty minutes. (See!) But it’s not moving nearly fast enough, he says. “I don’t know if we will reach the level of the United States or China,” he adds.

Murthy gave a more nuanced explanation than the usual “it’s corruption” answer you get in India. He explained that 65% of India’s population lives in rural areas and 35% live in cities. And there’s such polarity between the quality of life that politicians have to appear to be doing more for the villages than the cities if they want to get re-elected. That leaves prosperous economic cities blighted by poor sewage systems, pollution spewing generators and beggars weaving through traffic tapping on car windows. “Different emerging nations take different paths,” he says. “In China, they chose to emphasize giving people economic freedom first and political freedom second. In India we chose the opposite path.”

Hurting or Helping US-based Indians? All you have to do is read the comments on one of Vivek Wadhwa’s posts to see the ugly, anti-immigrant, anti-Indian fervor that’s been whipped up in America, post-recession. A lot of it has to do with outsourcing. I asked Murthy if he felt his company and industry’s huge success has indirectly made life harder for Indian-Americans. He turned the blame on xenophobes like Lou Dobbs and grandstanding politicians who use the wedge issue to get viewers and votes.

But it’s an issue he has to address a lot. He answers it by saying every morning he gets up and gets a Pepsi out of his GE Fridge and drives his American car to work where he sits down at his Dell computer. India used to have companies that made soft drinks, refrigerators, cars and computers. But the American ones were better. Allowing them in hurt Indian workers in the short term, but provided a far better quality of life for a much bigger swath of Indians long term. He argues outsourcing has done the same thing for US companies. Greater efficiencies and cost-savings enables these companies to stay competitive and there’s no reason they can’t—in theory—plow those savings into better local jobs or job training.

This argument isn’t going to pacify hate-mongers, because nothing will. Murthy knows that too and while he regrets it, he seems to accept it as reality.

Advice for Entrepreneurs. Murthy has started a $170 million venture fund, so although he spends most of his time still at Infosys, he clearly cares about encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs. He had two big pieces of advice for them. One, be able to articulate what you do in one sentence. If you can’t, you don’t have a good idea. And two, make sure the market is ready. Businesses are killed, not congratulated, for being ahead of their time.

New York food trucks turn to Twitter

Scientists Use Sex-Crazed Bugs As Pesticide

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Opera, Safari Beat Chrome On Google’s Own JavaScript Conformance Test

Back in June, Google launched Sputnik, a suite of tools that runs over 5,000 tests to check a web browser’s JavaScript conformance. Last week, they made the tool a lot easier for anyone to use, with a version that works in the web browser. The results are interesting.

Notably, both the Opera and Safari web browsers beat Google’s own Chrome browser in the test. As you can see in the picture above, Opera is the clear leader, with only 78 failures (the closer to the center, the less errors). Safari came in second with 159 errors, with Chrome in third with 218 errors. Firefox is close behind with 259 errors, while Internet Explorer is the outlier with 463 errors.

These tests were run on Windows machines, with the latest released version of each browser. Using the web tool on my Mac, though, shows similar results (at least for Opera, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox — there is no IE for Mac anymore).

While much of the focus on JavaScript is about speed (that’s what the SunSpider test measures, for example), Sputnik is interesting because it focuses on conformity, making it more like the Acid3 test, which tests web standards compliance. Chrome, Safari, and Opera have all passed Acid3, with Firefox getting very close (94/100 for Firefox 3.6). IE, meanwhile, again lags behind with just 20/100 for IE8. And even the new IE9 preview only scores 55/100.

Speaking of IE9, I tried to run the Sputnik tool in the preview build of the new browser on Windows 7. Unfortunately, it completely shut down several times after getting up to about 50 failures after only a few hundred of the 5,000+ tests — not a good sign. But again, it’s just a very early preview release of the browser, and early SunSpider results for the browser have been good.

Bio Breakthrough Signals Future Sensors

No Kidding! Telx, a Data Center Operator, Files for a $100M IPO

DayStar Technologies, Inc. Receives Additional NASDAQ Staff Determination Letter Relating to Minimum Bid Price

DayStar Technologies, Inc. Receives Additional NASDAQ Staff Determination Letter Relating to Minimum Bid Price

Federal Judge Bars Instant Publishing of Analysts' Stock Tips

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Review: Aperture 3

If you’re a photographer and use a Mac, chances are you’re using Lightroom or Aperture. Probably Lightroom, since Aperture is less popular among pros — and the latest version seems to be an acknowledgment of that. The features added in version 3 are clearly intended to draw casual shooters using iPhoto to the paid image editing honey pot.

Since so many of these amazing new features are direct side-loads from iPhoto, it smooths the process and makes the program as a whole more approachable, though whether existing Aperture users will find them helpful is questionable. Brushes, on the other hand, are a welcome addition to any photographer’s toolset, and depending on how dedicated you are, may be worth the price of admission.

Continue reading…

Sleuths Trace Digital Clues to Predict iPad Sales - Wall Street Journal

The Guardian

Sleuths Trace Digital Clues to Predict iPad Sales Wall Street Journal Weeks before the iPad, Apple Inc.'s new tablet computer, is released, amateur analysts are reading the digital equivalent of tea leaves to estimate early sales. But their findings might not be as clear as the forthcoming device's color ... Calendar app and sailboat-racing game: iPhone apps of the weekCNET Apple Sets March 27 Deadline for First IPad AppsPC World Apple to iPad devs: on your mark, get set, submit!Ars Technica GamePro.com -PC Magazine -TopNews United States all 530 news articles »

Review: Aperture 3

If you’re a photographer and use a Mac, chances are you’re using Lightroom or Aperture. Probably Lightroom, since Aperture is less popular among pros — and the latest version seems to be an acknowledgment of that. The features added in version 3 are clearly intended to draw casual shooters using iPhoto to the paid image editing honey pot. Since so many of these amazing new features are direct side-loads from iPhoto, it smooths the process and makes the program as a whole more approachable, though whether existing Aperture users will find them helpful is questionable. Brushes, on the other hand, are a welcome addition to any photographer’s toolset, and depending on how dedicated you are, may be worth the price of admission.

Invasion of the iPhoto features

As long as I’ve been using Aperture, I’ve considered it a processing application. Its photo management was troublesome here and there, and iPhoto had the best ways of showing off your shots, but I dealt with it since maintaining two separate libraries of the same photos would be disk space suicide. I’ve only used Lightroom a little bit (and a version or two back) but all my friends say that it just has a better workflow for serious photo work — importing a couple hundred shots, scrubbing through them, doing the necessary adjustments, and outputting to the necessary format. Not that I have trouble doing that in Aperture, but apparently it’s faster and better in Lightroom.

Confronted with such a fearsome opponent, Apple decided that it would be better to flank than to risk a frontal assault. Hence the expansion of Aperture’s incorporation of iPhoto features Faces and Places. I question their relevance in a photo processing application, but given Apple’s tendency towards coalescing functionality, I’m guessing that iPhoto will eventually be Aperture: Gimped Edition, and the only real choice for organizing and messing with large numbers of photos will be Aperture.

There are some kinks to be worked out. Faces plainly doesn’t work. After it spent literally five hours going through my photos (about 1000 per hour), this is what it has come up with:

No, it didn’t have a lot to go on (I hadn’t “trained” it much yet) but really now. After giving it a few more pointers on what I looked like, it still mistook a three-year-old tow-headed girl, my friend Monica (who is Indian, and in a wedding dress), some E3 booth babes, and Casio president Kazuo Kashio for pale, bearded, Devin Coldewey. The cork board background is jarring and the interface for going through your shots is terrible. I realize this is a technology still being perfected, and that is why I am wondering: what is it doing in my RAW editing program?

Places is useful if you have a geotagging camera (still rare) or want to spend a few hours dragging and dropping stuff onto the map. It can be fun, actually, if you take a lot of pictures of your friends, and want to drag and drop this or that night onto the location you went to; it’s like creating a different kind of album (“Linda’s Tavern”), and indeed you can make a browsable smart album from locations. If you’re like me, you won’t feel complete until the photos are more or less where they were within the city, and not all grouped in a single pin, smack in the middle of the city. This could have some promise, but with a backlog of several thousand shots, getting a library up to date in Places is a task I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

It’s a mistake to judge Faces and Places by simply saying “well we were fine before them,” because it may just be that we found ways of working in the old system of organization (Project>Folder>Album) that approximated what these new features do. But I don’t think it’s wrong to say they just don’t really do much, and feel out of place to boot. You have to work at them, or shoot for them, in order for them to really be worthwhile. Still I have to give credit where credit’s due: if you just consider Faces and Places new columns to organize by (like rating or date) then they’re worth their salt. As flagship features, though, they’re duds.

Lastly, the slide show thing. It’s like finding a trout in the milk. Not that it doesn’t work — it works as well as iPhoto’s thing, and I suppose it’s better to have than not. It’s just a little weird to have a sort of… aftermarket feature popped in there next to the serious editing tools. Its little presets are, like in most Apple programs, 25% solid, 75% fluff. Who in the name of all that is holy is going to pick “Shatter” as their slide show transition? It’s ghastly.

The new features are very well explained in little videos accessible through the “Welcome” screen, which will be handy for new users — if they can find the screen after they close it (it’s in Help>Welcome to Aperture).

The good stuff

So if the iPhoto features are icing, the actual cake is the RAW editing, adjustment tools, and user interface. Let’s start with what I would say is the best new feature: Brushes.

You can see a pretty thorough overview of the feature at Apple’s site, but the gist is that it allows you to apply certain effects in limited areas using a brush of adjustable size and intensity. That’s great! I can’t count the number of times I’ve vacillated between two versions of a photo where an adjustment necessary for one part ended up blowing out another, or I just wanted to bring out the color in the eyes but not in the background. A lot of fiddling could usually approximate the effect I wanted, but it would be so much easier to just use a brush. I’ll be using the hell out of this feature, and it’s perhaps the only real step Apple took against Adobe in this update.

(combination Brushes and Help Video screenshot)

The brushes are non-destructive, like any of the dials and curves you can play with in the adjustments panel, so you can feel free to experiment, layer, and try out different effects. One thing I often have to do when shooting review shots is emphasize the color of LEDs, but if the subject is well-lit, the LEDs are going to be barely visible. No problem; make a little brush, add in a little contrast right there, bump the saturation just in the one area, and boom, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Brushes are useful for lots of little things like that.

The new full-screen browser is handy but not really a revolution. They’ve added the ability to get around your library a little more, which is nice, but it’s not as streamlined as the regular browser, which is always accessible by a single keystroke. The fullscreen presentation has definitely been improved, however, and when showing off photos to friends or clients, it’s a better option than either the plain editing window or a slide show.

The preset adjustments, I think we can agree, are being blown way out of proportion; Apple’s breathless description sets them up to be quite the killer feature. Unfortunately, these are the same kind of “professional adjustments” that you have been able to apply on cheap point-and-shoots since the beginning of time. There are a few quick adjust things like high-contrast black-and-white or exposure +1 that are nice to have previews for (the live preview window is handy), but let’s be honest, these are just filters. I’d like to be able to say that they’re carefully adjusted so you won’t see weird color effects, blackouts, or blowouts, but the fact is every one I tried looked cheap and overdone. The others, like white balance and so on, seem pretty redundant considering the actual controls for adjusting those aspects are mere pixels away in the same window.

Click to see it larger. You can’t really tell here, since this photo isn’t very high contrast, but in several of the other shots I tried this on, the vintage look was really purple, cross-processing was really green, and toy camera pushed the contrast way too far. Subtle adjustments these are not.

The good news is that people new to the program might try a couple, see that they were created by dragging curves and color bars around, and then make their own. I’ve had my own “base” adjustment for years now, which was just as easily accessible and just as customizable, though limited to a single adjustment category. Putting together a “look” for a shoot using this feature might be easier now than before, but it’s still just a toy at this point.

The ability to have multiple libraries is nice; splitting work and personal stuff would be my move, so that if a meteor crashed into TC HQ (or, more likely, I’m fired for insubordination), I could free up a couple gigs in one clean sweep. It’s also convenient for backing up and sharing; “here’s my whole ‘wedding’ library, feel free to do what you like with it” rather than “here’s a folder full of RAW files.”

A quick note

Just a PSA: installation of Aperture 3 took ages. Plan on losing at least a working day to 100% processor usage as it converts your library, searches for Faces, and reprocesses your RAW files with the new profile. I’m not holding this against Apple (it’s a LOT of data to sift through) but it’s just something to be aware of.

Conclusion

Aperture is still a great program, in my opinion, and the budding photographer would be a lot better off with this than with iPhoto if they’re planning on doing anything more than collecting snapshots. I’ve gotten used to Aperture’s workflow and they haven’t changed it much in 3, in fact they’ve provided a couple serious improvements with Brushes and potentially Places and Faces — you know, if you’re into that kind of thing.

The trouble I see is that Aperture, once a rather single-minded program, is being diluted with features that have nothing to do with its core functionality. Why not have a new program, called “Collection” or something, that hooks into all your libraries, allows for creating robust slide shows, exporting directly to Facebook, and all that sort of thing? Putting all this junk into Aperture is doing to it what Apple has done to iTunes: once a sleek and straightforward program, it has now grown bloated beyond comprehension; it’s a bit like seeing a once-great fighter gone to seed. I have more of an attachment to Aperture than to iTunes, but if Aperture 4 continues along the vector indicated by Aperture 3, you can consider me a Lightroom conversion.

Give Aperture 3 a 30-day trial for free here. $199 to buy, $99 to upgrade.

Update: I completely neglected to mention that Aperture 3 also now has full 64-bit support. This means newer macs sporting Snow Leopard and adequate hardware should get a sweet performance boost.

UPDATE 1-Medicines Co says Angiomax patent extension denied

Google Buzz widget now available on Android

Section: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Google

Android’s differences in look and feel to the iPhone stand out when you show the home screen. On the iPhone you are greeted with rows and columns of little chicklet style shortcuts. However Android’s home screen is a bit more intuitive, allowing you to set widgets to the home screen that perform functions of the application itself. Now, Google has released its own widget for Buzz to allow for easy access.

The widget itself takes up 4 horizontal icon spaces on the screen and when clicked, takes you to an input screen for your Buzz. You have the ability to, of course, type out a message, but also attach a photo, or launch the camera to take a picture. Below that is an option to show your location (I would not recommend using the location function when at home), and the post button.

The widget requires Android 1.6 and is available only in English. Google recommends searching for “Google Buzz” in the market, but if that doesn’t work, go to the apps section > social > just in, and it should be up towards the top. After installation you can add the widget to any screen in the same way you add any other widget.

Read [Google Mobile Blog] Via [Mashable]

Full Story » | Written by Hunter Clarke for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Reasons to care about Viacom v. Google (FAQ) - CNET

Telegraph.co.uk

Reasons to care about Viacom v. Google (FAQ) CNET Viacom has accused YouTube of looking the other way when clips from the Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures were once plentiful on the site. Thursday's 200-page dump of court documents in the 3-year-old, $1 billion copyright fight between ... YouTube and Viacom Go to BattlePC World The juicy details behind the Viacom-YouTube lawsuitUSA Today Viacom and Google Battle Goes OnTopNews United States Atlantic Online -New York Post -Register all 1,067 news articles »

Who still buys iPod docks in 2010?

The year 2004 called, and it wants its iPod dock back. (Yes, I know it works with the iPhone, too.) Seriously, do people still buy these things? Inquiring minds want to know.

Have you used an upside-down tomato planter?

Peter Watts found guilty

Update: More info from Peter

YouTube Was Evil, and Google Knew It

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NCAA March Madness Brings in More Viewers Online [Voices]

By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

The NCAA basketball tournament, with its array of games played at conflicting times during the workday, has long been discussed as an ideal sporting event for online coverage. And based on numbers out today from CBSSports.com, more people are indeed watching games on streaming video this year. On the 2010 tournament’s first day, CBS says, the games drew 3 million unique visitors to on-demand video, about 11 percent more than on the first day in 2009.

The network said people watched 3.4 million hours of live streaming video and audio, a 21 percent increase from last year’s first day. The most-watched game online was the double-overtime Florida vs. BYU game Thursday afternoon.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

CrunchDeals: Buy a Roku HD Player, get $20 Amazon on Demand credit

Roku’s HD player is a great deal at $99, but it’s an even better deal if you buy one now from Amazon. In addition to having a great Netflix box, you’ll also be able to use Amazon’s Video of Demand service, and to get you started they’ll throw in $20 worth of credit.

That’s a pretty good deal, considering that a movie like The Hurt Locker rents for $3.99, or you can rent a TV show for about $3 an episode (watch Human Target, seriously). You’ll give $99 for the Roku HD or $129.99 for the Roku HD-XR, and then Amazon will credit your account so you can start renting as soon as you get the box hooked up. Better hurry though, because the deal is only good until the 31st.

Crocodoc Sets Its Sights On Adobe Acrobat With New Update

Last month we wrote about Crocodoc, a new Y Combinator-funded company that makes it very easy to upload a text document or PowerPoint deck and mark it up online to share with your colleagues. Unfortunately, it was also pretty bare boned — you couldn’t even save your edited document to your hard drive. Today, that’s changing: Crocodoc has rolled out some key new features (including the ability to save) that make the service significantly more flexible, and also pits it more directly against Adobe’s Acrobat Pro.

Aside from the ability to save to PDF, the new version includes a freehand pen tool, a tool to convert any website to PDF (which you can then add notes to), and a new API. In a few days, the company will be releasing its application on Google’s recently-launched App Marketplace. The service will also be rolling out a Flash-based embeddable document viewer (similar to what you’ll find on DocStoc and Scribd) that lets you both view and mark up embedded documents.

CEO Ryan Damico says that these features make Crocodoc more competitive with Adobe’s $400 Acrobat Pro software because the free Acrobat Reader most people have doesn’t allow them to mark up and save their documents (personally, I’ve been avoiding any software with the word ‘Acrobat’ in its title for years). Damico does acknowledge that there are still plenty of premium features that Crocodoc doesn’t have that Adobe’s paid software does, but says that this basic editing/saving functionality is what most people are after, anyway. Damico says that in the long term, Crocodoc is hoping to “do to Acrobat what Gmail did to Outlook” by taking a widely used desktop application and bringing it online.

The Twist Alarm Clock forces you to activate your brain in the morning

Japan and its alarm clocks. Most of these devices force you to wake up through an extra-annoying noise (or by moving away from you), but this new one, the so-called Twist Alarm Clock [JP], makes you solve (simple) math problems.

The way it works is that when the alarm starts ringing in the morning, the clock uses its two displays and two rotatable parts to create a math problem, for example 8+2=?. It won’t stop ringing until you give it the right answer. 5-4=2, as seen in the picture above, won’t work. Maker D-Forme says the main idea behind their clock is to force buyers to activate their brains in the morning.

Sized at 13.5×6.3×7cm, the Twist Alarm clock is available only in Japan (price: $30). If you’re interested, I’d suggest contacting import/export specialists like Japan Trend Shop, Geek Stuff 4 U or Rinkya.

So Hot Right Now: Top 10 Gadgetell posts for the week of March 14, 2010

Section:

Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week?  Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!

• PC World calls iPad buyers “Idiots”
  ” PC World writer, Galen Gruman, called out iPad pre-order buyers on Saturday, calling them names in his post, “iPad Pre-Orders: For Idiots Only.”  Apple’s iPad went on pre-order Friday and is rumored to have 120,000 devices sold as…” MORE »
• Verizon’s Nexus One to be sold only at online store
  ”  Smartphone users on Verizon’s network have been patiently awaiting the release of the Nexus One for several months now. Well apparently the release date is coming up fast according to the leaked…” MORE »
• Netflix pulls plug on contest
  ” Many a geek have participated in Netflix’s competition to improve their recommendation algorithm. The prize? $1 million. However, Netflix has now officially cut the second iteration of this competition short due to privacy concerns. Apparently, a woman filed a lawsuit against Netflix…” MORE »
• New version of Digg is “five years in the making”
  ” With the majority of the technology community in Austin this week for SXSW, Digg felt it was a good time to release a new version of their social bookmarking site. In, fact they decided to release the alpha version…” MORE »
• BlackBerry users itching to leave?  40% to jump ship says study
  ” Is RIM losing the attraction it once held so proudly?  Maybe, according to a study by Crowd Science that looked at mobile phone owners and asked what their next device will be.  While customer preference…” MORE »
• Nexus One headed to Verizon, available beginning as early as next month
  ” According to reports in a Chinese newspaper, HTC has already begun shipping a CDMA version of the popular Android based Nexus One to Verizon and it should be on sale by early next month. This will come as good news to Android lovers,…” MORE »
• AT&T gets cloud syncing - makes messaging phones smarter
  “Today, in addition to the 4 new devices announced, AT&T offered up their plan to earn your quick messaging device dollars.  In all, three new services are designed to make your low-cost device behave more like an expensive smartphone at a fraction of the cost.  The services…” MORE »
• Windows Phone 7 Series developer partners to include the AP, Pandora, Sling, Foursquare and more
  ” MIX 10 has kicked off, and as you would have expected the press releases have begun to roll out. The first of which gives us some details about…” MORE »
• AT&T reveals spring lineup.  New phones for quick messaging
  ” AT&T announced two Samsung devices, the Strive and Sunburst as well as two Pantech devices, Link and Pursuit as part of the there new Spring line up.  AT&T also announced services to make…” MORE »
• HTC Desire, Legend coming to UK in April
  ”  When they were announced, the HTC Desire and Legend quickly became the Android phones to want.  The announcements at MWC, however, came with no release dates, and no talk of a US release.  Now we have no official US release…” MORE »

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

QOTD [Digital Daily]

QOTD [Digital Daily]

“[They've] burnt bridges and they’ve burnt the Google brand in China. There is no way Google can ever come back. It’s over for Google in China.”

– Peter Lui, Google’s former chief financial controller for the Asia Pacific region

Mosquitos of the future may vaccinate against malaria, instead of spread it

Mosquitos are one of the major ways that malaria is spread, causing an estimated two million deaths per year. Wouldn’t it be cool if those mosquitos could be genetically modified to spread a malaria vaccination instead of the disease itself? Scientists have theorized about just such a solution for years, but recent work from Jichi Medical University in Japan proves that it’s actually possible, not just theoretically possible.

Associate Professor Shigeto Yoshida and his research team “successfully generated a transgenic mosquito expressing the Leishmania vaccine within its saliva. Bites from the insect succeeded in raising antibodies, indicating successful immunization with the Leishmania vaccine through blood feeding.” Of course, this vaccination idea isn’t perfect, since you’ll still have one or more mosquito bites to scratch at, but at least you won’t have malaria.

Maybe I’m alarmist, but I can’t help but think that this kind of approach throws the natural order of things seriously out of whack. As I read the story, I kept hearing Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park in my mind, saying “life, uh … finds a way.”

Ex-MySQL Chief Marten Mickos Lands New CEO Job (PC World)

Lenovo Ultralight Combines High-Grade Looks, Low-Octane Performance

Lenovo Ultralight Combines High-Grade Looks, Low-Octane Performance

CCH Audio Seminar Focuses on Just Enacted Jobs Bill: How Best to Use New Hiring, Retention Incentives

Malcolm X assassin to be released on parole

Oracle Shuttering OpenSSO

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Smartphones not enough for carriers at CTIA (Reuters)

Browser Choice Boosts Downloads of Opera 10.5 (NewsFactor)

Palm: Pssst. Wanna Buy 1.15 Million Smartphones? [Digital Daily]

“Obviously, we’re disappointed in our sell-through and we’re working very aggressively right now to resolve that….We’re working closely with all of our carrier partners and our future partners….We want to make sure that the point of sale is well trained. So step one is to make sure that we can get in with the point of sale. Remember, webOS is a brand new operating system. And it takes a while for the people in the stores to get accustomed to something new.”

– Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein

Palm shipped 960,000 smartphones during its third quarter–23 percent more than in the previous quarter. Too bad the company sold fewer than half of them, because now, on top of all its other woes, Palm (PALM) is developing an inventory problem, a nasty one, too. Looking over the company’s latest financials, Morgan Stanley (MS) analyst Ehud Gelblum puts Palm’s total channel inventory at an “alarming” 1.154 million devices.

That’s 197 days of inventory Palm hasn’t been able to move off the shelves.

Gelblum figures that even if Palm reduces its channel sell-in in its fourth quarter and manages to boost sell-through from 408,000 devices to 575,000 devices, the company will end up with a full quarter’s worth of excess inventory at the end of May.

That’s just gruesome. And as hard as Palm is striving to improve sell-through, it’s not likely to improve any time soon. Says Gelblum: “We expect Palm’s new in-store initiatives and better advertising to improve sell-thru, but excess inventory, which we estimate at 882k units or nearly 197 full days of inventory likely weigh on new device shipments and thereby revenue for several more quarters.”

Adding detail, Gelblum paints a challenging picture. “With channel inventory levels sky high, cash burn going well north of $130-150M next quarter and both a new Android phone and likely a new iPhone model all hitting store shelves in the spring and summer timeframe, we see little way numbers could begin to move back up again until at least the end of the calendar year at the earliest.”

How can Palm drag those sky-high inventory levels back to earth? Perhaps a price cut like the one inspired by its 2001 inventory glut?

Let the Sunshine in

“...government information ought to be made available to the public as quickly as possible, with a minimum of rigmarole and in the easiest, most accessible way possible--which these days means via the Internet.”

Kindle in living color plus video?  How soon?

Section: Video, Portable Video, Gadgets / Other, ebooks

It seems unlikely that at some point the Kindle will offer a color screen to keep up with the myriad of color screens featured on stealthy competitors like iPad, JooJoo, Slate and others.  When Amazon decides to pull the trigger, they’ll likely go with one of the new screens shown here.  These screens were shown by Kindle’s current screen maker, Prime View Intl. at a trade show in China.

These new screens offer color but not real video.  The refresh on these screens is short of real videos 30fps, but slower animations are possible.  These screens look to be an evolutionary step bringing easy reading e-ink to new places.  The screens will go into mass production in Q4 of this year.

It was confirmed that Amazon and the Barnes and Noble have seen the new screen but no comments on adoption. 

Touch screen e-ink screens were also shown off that could find a welcome home on the Kindle.  Simple hand-written note taking was shown in a demo and brings to mind the issues educational institutions ultimately had issues with the Kindle in testing.  Perhaps touch is on the Kindles roadmap as well.

Read: [PC World]

Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is a nun currently living in Jerusalem. She grew up as the daughter of a prominent Ethiopian intellectual, but spent much of her young life in exile, first for schooling, and then again during Mussolini's occupation of Ethiopia's capitol city, Addis Ababa, in 1936. Her musical career was often tragically thwarted by class and gender politics, and when the Emperor himself actually went so far as to personally veto an opportunity for Guèbrou to study abroad in England, she sank into a deep depression before fleeing to a monastery in 1948. Today, she spends up to seven hours a day playing the piano in seclusion and even gave a concert to some lucky ducks in Washington D.C. a few years ago. A compilation of her compositions was re-issued on the consistently great Ethiopiques label. You can read more about her life at the Emahoy Music Foundation.


Source: Boing Boing | 19 Mar 2010 | 3:19 pm

Picture 90, Rodney Alcala

Police in Huntington Beach, CA are asking for the public's help in trying to identify possible victims in photos belonging to convicted rapist and serial killer Rodney Alcala (the "Dating Game" killer). Above, photo #110, from a series of hundreds taken on of before July, 1979, many believed to have been shot by Mr. Alcala (Flickr photoset here). The prints were found in his Seattle storage locker. Some have been ID'd since the scans were published online.

(Random case fact: he is reported to have studied film under and worked for Roman Polanski.)


Source: Boing Boing | 19 Mar 2010 | 3:12 pm

Windows XP Mode Needs No Virtualization Hardware - eWeek

Latest Gadgets (blog)

Windows XP Mode Needs No Virtualization Hardware eWeek Microsoft's Windows XP Mode, designed to provide SMBs that upgraded to Windows 7 with last-ditch compatibility for proprietary applications that need Windows XP, no longer requires hardware virtualization technology to run. Originally announced as part ... Windows 7 XP Mode Loses Hardware RequirementPC World PC Specs Eased For Win7 XP ModeInformationWeek Windows 7 XP Mode no longer requires hardware virtualizationThe Money Times Tom's Hardware Guide -OC Metro -NewsFactor Network all 251 news articles »

Company Sued, Loses For Not Using Patented Tech

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Special Guests, Android Updates, and the iPad on PCWorld Podcast 69 (PC World)

Basketball, Facebook and Gossip Are Malware Targets (NewsFactor)

Google Hands Out Its First 1337 Cash Prize For A Chrome Bug

Back in January, Google announced that it would follow Mozilla’s lead and start offering cash bounties for bugs found in the code of Chromium (the open-source browser behind Chrome), or Chrome by the community. Google both matches Mozilla’s $500 and ups the bounty all the way up to $1,337 (yes, 1337) for “particularly severe or particularly clever” bugs. This week, they rewarded the first of those.

As noted on the Chrome Release blog, Google made four cash payments on Wednesday. There were two $500 prizes (both for memory errors), one $1,000 prize (for a cross-orgin bypass), and the first-ever $1,337 prize. The lucky receipient of that was a man named Sergey Glazunov, who located a bug that Google is calling, “High Integer overflows in WebKit JavaScript objects.”

This crowd-sourced bug hunting seems like a great idea, especially for a browser moving through development as quickly as Chrome. Chrome has only existed for a year and a half and already they’re testing version 5.0. Stable builds of both the Mac and Linux version of the browser are likely to launch at some point over the next few months.

Green E-Biller Transactis Raises $2.5 Million

Banks, cable companies, and utilities all want to get rid of their paper bills and get customers on their electronic billing systems. Just as there were back-office billing providers for the paper era, there are now back-office electronic billers. A company in Charlotte, North Carolina called Transactis is one of them, and it just raised a $2.5 million round led by New York City-based Metamorphic Ventures. CEO Joe Proto and other existing shareholders also participated in the round.

The round is an extension of a $3 million series C the company raised last year, and brings the total capital raised to $10.5 million.

Transactis works primarily with banks and payment processors to take over the whole e-billing process for them, from presenting the bills via email to collecting the cash. More and more consumers are opting to go paperless (it’s the green thing to do), and companies save on the paper, printing, and postage costs.

Email billing is a growth business, and Transactis is carving out a nice little niche for itself.

Microsoft pulls Bing app from non-U.S. App Stores (Macworld.com)

Will iPad Sales Beat the iPhone? Who Cares? - PC World

Product Reviews (blog)

Will iPad Sales Beat the iPhone? Who Cares? PC World Conflicting reports have surfaced for the last week about how well Apple's still-unreleased iPad is selling, how well it will sell, and whether it'll make more of a dent in the market than the iPhone's debut. Most recently, unnamed sources told the ... INSIDE MOBILE: Apple iPad: Migrating to a Three Mobile Device WorldeWeek Apple's IPad Debut Is Unlikely to Outdo IPhone StartBusinessWeek VIVmag Shows Off Interactive iPad Version in the WorksThe Mac Observer CNET -New York Times (blog) -MacNN all 68 news articles »

Free Software To Save Us From Social Networks

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Verizon Droid update: all according to plan or aborted?

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

Two blogs, two stories about what happened to the supposed rollout of an update to the Motorola Droid’s operating system.  One says this is all on purpose the other suggests a flaw was found in last minute testing and aborted.  Supposedly, Verizon has confirmed both, so what’s the truth?

Planned

According to Phonescooper, Verizon reached out to them confirming the plan is (and always has been) to update a small sample group of users first.  Then, based on their experiences, roll out the update to all users.  Sounds like a smart plan.

Only I was unable to identify another upgrade roll out where Verizon followed the same schedule of updating a few select users, then broadening it out to the general user population.  It could be that the Droid currently sits atop the carriers “best phone” throne and they wanted to insure it wasn’t a pr nightmare?  Or it could be the companies new way of doing things.

Crikey! It’s a bug

According to BGR, the rollout was called off at the last minute.  BGR confirmed this with a few trusted informants and posted what appears to be a screenshot of a VZW computer detailing the delay.  BGR updated the post to confirmed after reaching out to Verizon for a confirmation, suggesting VZW did. 

So which is it?  The only part of the info that both these stories agree on is two-part: an update to Android 2.1 is coming and no one seems to be sure when.  We’ll keep waiting.

Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Airtel says it will bring iPhone 3GS to India (Macworld.com)

Location Isn’t A War Between Two Sides, It’s A Gold Rush For Everyone

Editor’s note: This post was written by Joe Stump, the co-founder of SimpleGeo, a geolocation infrastructure company. While much of the focus in location these days is on the front-end side of things, SimpleGeo focuses on the backend, allowing startups to very easily get started with geolocation.

There’s been a lot of coverage lately about the location “war” between Gowalla and Foursquare. Nobody is arguing that Gowalla and Foursquare aren’t, on some levels, competing, but I do think a lot of people are missing the big picture here. Which is the impending location gold rush.

My cofounder, Matt Galligan, and I firmly believe that location is in a similar position as social was in 2001 or so. By that I mean that, at the time, social was very nascent, but exciting as it gave us a whole new view of the data we consume every day. Over the course of almost 10 years we’ve seen social get baked into everything from photo sharing to financial tools. I think that location, similarly, gives us an interesting new view of our data.

This momentum has been slowly gaining steam since, essentially, the iPhone was released. We, the developers and general nerd populous, finally had an open platform that had location (in the form of latitude and longitude of our users) baked into it. The first wave of location services made location the core feature. Much like social, this isn’t sustainable long-term. You can’t be “Some Company plus location” and expect to sustain users. Especially after Some Company enables location themselves.

Which bring us to the second wave of location, which I think was started by our friends at Foursquare. They were, in my opinion, the first product to gain traction by moving past simple location and building an experience on top of it. It’s as if co-founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai said, “Okay, we have location, but that’s boring. Let’s make a game out of going out with our friends!” In other words, they worked under the assumption of having location and built a compelling experience from there.

I think people who are building location-based applications need to keep two things in mind:

1. If there’s any war brewing, it’s over presence. That is the very basic question of where you and your friends are and who may know those details. Gowalla, Foursquare, Loopt, et al, if they wish to own presence, will be duking it out with Twitter and Facebook. For anyone who’s not already in this game it’s going to be very hard to break into it at this point.

2. You need to move past the mindset that location is the feature. Build products under the assumption that you have a user’s location and that you can use the social plumbing we’ve been building for the last nine years. What kind of interesting experiences can you build on top of the potent mixture of friends, location, and the real world?

So who’s going to win? More than just one company. The users are going to get more interesting and compelling experiences, some familiar names will revolutionize their products with location, and some kid in a garage we haven’t heard of is about to make us all look like fools.

I can’t wait.

[photo: flickr/bogenfreund]

AppGate: App review sites ask for money in exhange for reviews

In the fine tradition of lazily naming any sort of controversy after Watergate, I hereby present AppGate. It seems that certain iPhone App developers are paying low-rent “review” sites for favorable reviews, thereby creating the false impression that their App is cool and everything.

Wired gets the gold stat for unearthing this scandal, which has centered on two sites (so far), ThePhoneAppReview.com and AppCraver.com. The gist of it is that these sites charge App developers for the “privilege” of being reviewed. You want us to review your App? Sure, just give us $X-Amount first. That is literally the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life, and I don’t use the word “literally” in the watered down sense of the word. No, I mean it’s the Billy Madison most insanely idiotic thing I’ve ever heard.

The money comes in one of a few forms. Sites will charge developers in order to “expedite” any review. So, Site A asks Joe Developer for $X-Amount in order to review his App before it reviews Jane Developer’s App. (Funny story: I remember once being asked by a public relations person where their App review was in my review queue. Amazing, considering I don’t have an iPhone and never agreed to any App review in the first place!)

Sometimes a site will say, “Well, we’ll review your App, but you need to pay in order to help defray the costs of writing said review.” If that’s the case, an App developer should merely say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Then again, I’m not an iPhone App developer, so I don’t know the pressures these folks are under to get the word out there about their cool new App.

Flickr

Former MySQL Chief Mickos Is Joining Eucalyptus [Voices]

By Don Clark, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Managers who have built significant businesses from open-source software have tended to be rare. That’s why the computer industry has been wondering about the next move for Marten Mickos, who led the Swedish database company MySQL and sold it in 2008 to Sun Microsystems for $1 billion. Now Mickos, after leaving Sun a year ago, says he is being named CEO of another open-source startup called Eucalyptus that is generating a buzz in techie circles.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

SXSW: Scenes From a Musical Madhouse

Zenith Infotech Shows Technology Solution Providers How to Side-Step Security Threats in Springfield, Massachusetts

6 Cars So Alluring They're in an Art Museum

The Woes of Munich's Linux Migration

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Zenith Infotech Shows Technology Solution Providers How to Side-Step Security Threats in San Diego

Apple Now Accepting iPad App Submissions [Digital Daily]

The next app gold rush is on. Moments ago, Apple invited developers writing applications for its forthcoming iPad tablet to begin submitting them to the App Store for approval.

“iPad will begin shipping soon and your opportunity to be part of the grand opening of the iPad App Store starts today,” Apple (AAPL) said in a message to developers. “Submit your iPad app now for an initial review by the App Review Team and receive feedback on its readiness for the grand opening.”

Apple’s set a March 27 deadline — at 5 p.m. PST — for developers to submit their apps if they hope to have them available for the initial iPad release.

An encouraging sign. Sadly, most of the apps submitted, at least initially, will have been developed on Apple’s iPad simulator software and not on the device itself, which has been given to only a few select partners. Let’s hope these early apps don’t suffer too much from a lack of hands-on testing.

[Image credit: Apple Insider]

FCC kicks off cable-broadcaster review - Reuters

The Star-Ledger - NJ.com

FCC kicks off cable-broadcaster review Reuters WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The US Federal Communications Commission launched a review into how broadcasters and cable companies negotiate retransmission deals following a recent spat between Walt Disney Co's ABC Network and Cablevision Systems Corp. ... FCC Tests Spectrum DashboardInformationWeek FCC Asks If Broadcasters May Pull Station SignalsBusinessWeek FCC Seeks Comment on Rules for TV-Cable TalksABC News TopNews United States -Wall Street Journal -paidContent.org all 169 news articles »

iPad Developers Code Their Apps in the Dark

Apple on Friday said it would begin accepting submissions for iPad apps next week to launch with the grand opening of the iPad App Store.

Apple’s e-mail, provided to Wired.com by a developer who asked to remain anonymous, told developers to submit their apps by March 27, 5 p.m. PT if they wished to release their apps when the iPad lands April 3.

“You will also receive additional information about submitting your app for final review before iPad ships,” Apple’s e-mail stated. “Only apps submitted for the initial review will be considered for the grand opening of the iPad App Store.”

With the iPad launch just days away, we’re sure to see a wealth of brand-new tablet apps from developers eager to get a head start. Most of those developers, however, are coding in the dark, because they haven’t actually seen the device yet.

BusinessWeek on Friday reported that a select group of developers who have worked with the iPad had promised to keep the device isolated in a room with blacked-out windows. Apple also required them to sign a 10-page pact swearing not to disclose any information about the iPad.

Apple has only granted a few developers the privilege of using an iPad to help make their apps, according to BusinessWeek. Some major developers, including Evernote, have been rejected when they requested access to iPads for testing.

That creates a reverse conundrum for the Apple developer community. When the iPhone 3G and the App Store launched in July 2008, many apps were riddled with bugs, because developers were still getting familiar with the new iPhone OS 2.0 software development kit — but at least the original iPhone was available for testing. With the iPad, the situation has flip-flopped: Developers have experience with the iPhone SDK, but most have never touched an iPad.

And that means developers are coding apps that fit a tablet screen without any hands-on testing to gauge whether their interface is suitable for the iPad experience. Apple provides an emulator for testing iPad apps, but that won’t be the same as actually using the app with a large, multitouch screen.

Even Apple seems to have already been challenged by its own product. A few weeks ago I pointed out that some default iPhone apps — Calculator, Clock and Stocks, for example — are conspicuously missing from the iPad, according to press releases and images. Later, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber cited tipsters who explained that Steve Jobs scrapped the iPad versions of those apps.

“Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated,” Gruber wrote. “It wasn’t a technical problem, it was a design problem.”

In theory, making games for the iPad shouldn’t be as difficult. Games resized for a higher resolution might just work out fine. Designing iPad apps in general, however, will likely be a new art that developers — and even Apple programmers — fine-tune over time.

See Also:

• 5 Apps We Can’t Wait to See on the iPad
• The Wired Tablet App: A Video Demonstration
• Will the iPad Be Missing a Few iPhone Apps?
• Rumor: Some iPhone Apps Scrapped From iPad by Steve Jobs

iPad Developers Code Their Apps in the Dark

iPad Developers Code Their Apps in the Dark

Apple Starts Accepting iPad Applications; Launch Apps Must Be Submitted By March 27

There are only two weeks left until the iPad’s April 3 launch date, and Apple has just started reaching out to developers to say that they’re accepting applications that were developed specifically for the device. We’ve included the Email below. The key takeaway: If you’re looking to have your app available at launch, you need to submit it by March 27, at which point Apple’s team will let you know if your application is ready for the grand opening.

The first few weeks after the iPad is released will be a huge gold rush opportunity, as users look to try out the device’s large screen for the first time. In short, if you can make it to one of the App Store’s ‘top apps’ lists, you’ll likely do very well for yourself. The only problem is that the vast majority of developers have never had access to an actual iPad — they’re all working off of emulators, save for a handful of extremely lucky developers who literally have their iPads chained to a desk. Developers can tweak their applications all they want on their computer monitors, but until they’ve actually gotten to try it out for themselves, they’ll have a hard time figuring out if their apps feel right.

I expect most developers will scramble to submit what they have by March 27, and that we’ll then see numerous updates immediately afterward as developers tweak button placement and other interface elements. Some developers may choose to simply wait until they have a device in their hands so that they can try out their apps before submitting, but the App Store’s discoverability issues make this a risky move (of course, given the hundreds or thousands of applications that will launch alongside the iPad, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get noticed on launch day, either).

Keep in mind that users will also be able to use scaled-up versions of iPhone applications on their iPads. Given the choice, though, there’s little doubt they’ll choose a native iPad app over an iPhone app every time.

Rich Get Richer in 'Hot News' Stock-Tip Fight

Amazon's worst garden sculptures

Homegrown Evolution has a gallery of various terrible garden sculptures for sale on Amazon.com.

This one is my favorite Amazon sculpture offering. Looks like something Saddam Hussein would have installed by one of the shark ponds. Suggestive and creepy all at once.

Mom's Messie Mindset [Voices]

By Nitrozac and Snaggy

Shark-Bitten Crocodile Poop Fossils Found (No, Really)

Large Hadron Collider Triples Its Own Record

Students Seek Affordable Alternatives in Wake of Education Budget Cuts

Who’s on Crack in tech: the BlackBerry edition

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack

Welcome back to this week’s Who’s on Crack, the Interwebs only column brave enough to suggest illegal narcotics fuel many of the moves in the tech world.  It’s either that or Gadgetell is nuts for giving me a platform to spout off about stuff that bugs me or is just outright dumb.  This week, I am focusing on RIM, the little company from Canada that could.

• Is this BlackBerry OS 6?  Ack!
• RIM to buy Palm
• RIM name devices after Will Ferrell movies
• 40% ready to bail on BlackBerry

OS help, aisle 4

Purported images of BlackBerry OS 6 have popped up from “trusted, reliable connects”.  Oh dear, this isn’t pretty.  Can we hope this is just some Photoshop stunt?  RIM still has a good hold on the business market, but the gang could use an infusion of elegance and cool with trying so hard.  Ryan Hamrick, over at Know Your Cell, has limited hope for BlackBerry saying “by the time the OS finally reaches market, the concepts outlined could already be very dated. Some forward thinking would be nice, rather than a simple game of catch up.”

And that is where BlackBerry starts to lose it’s edge.  Was BlackBerry ever sexy? Like a 40’s pin up model, once worthy of being painted on the nose of bomber, now walking around her eighties trying to get men to light a cigarette from her aged, cracked but still puckered lips, BlackBerrys just are not sexy anymore.  They need to find some sex.

Palm’s got what RIM needs.

PalmBerry.  Say it loud, say it proud.  That is what the mobile device world needs and it sounds better than the erotic-inspired BlackPalm.  Palm isn’t swimming, it’s sinking; fast.  Our Robert Nelson reported, “Palm has recently posted their Q3 results, and I hate to say that many people would be surprised by this, but those results were not all that great. In fact, Palm posted a net loss of $22 million dollars.”

Ouch. But what if the boys and girls from up north (that’s Canada to you and me) got ahold of Palm.  A consumer-focused device that most will agree is the best mobile OS out there, would be RIMs to mold.  RIM can rebuild the clumsy QWERTY on the Pre, add some flair to the Pixi and maybe user in a well overdue touchscreen model.  Looking at just how many devices RIM has on the market, you know they’ve got hardware down.

Palm could bring some passion to design and inspire the hardware RIM puts out.

The BlackBerry Ron Burgundy.  The BlackBerry Blade(s of Glory).  The BlackBerry Old School.

I am not sure RIMs marketing is clear about what a Will Ferrell movie title brings to the consumers mind.  It isn’t all about good times and high fives.  It’s quite often, “look what they are making that poor man do this time.”  And I am sure I use the word “poor” loosely here.

Our Robert Nelson again reports, “Up until now we have seen a decent amount of images of the BlackBerry slider, as well as a rumor that it was going to become available with Sprint. And now the latest in the BlackBerry Slider story is suggesting that it will be available as of next month. Oh, and it also seems as if has been given a codename—Talladega.”

Ricky Bobby?  Really?  Is this the best we can do?  Now, from what we’ve seen the BlackBerry slider is no looker, but to slag it with a B-grade movie at best?  It just seems mean.

40% are leaving BlackBerry

Earlier this week, I posted on a study that levied 40% of BlackBerry owners are going to leave the OS for an iPhone.  I broke the study down into simple numbers (cause I am just not that smart) and found this, “if my math is right, of the people surveyed, 171 of them used a BlackBerry and 69 of those said they’d leave the BlackBerry platform for an iPhone.  The question becomes, RIMs had a few years to dream up something that draws users away from the iPhone - where is it?”

Indeed, where is it?  Reminiscent of that 80s “where’s the beef” commercial, what gives?  Was Storm and Storm 2 (the action packed sequel) all the company had up it’s collective sleeve?  Can we expect something bold (haha) and new?  Or is it tweaks on existing and more of the same?

I can’t image the study is accurate, but if it is, and they are seeing 40% drops in user base support, that doesn’t give it long.  Maybe it’s time for a variation on the theme, a veritable BlueBerry if you like.  A device that is as fun as it is serious, easy to use and of course, a dream to type on.  In short a webOS BlackBerry.  Long live the dream, crack heads.

Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Zenith Infotech Shows Technology Solution Providers How to Side-Step Security Threats in Cincinnati

Ivory Wars: Is it Time for Another Round?

Marvell Teases with $100 Tablet for Students

Chip maker Marvell wants to get into the tablet business and it is showing a prototype that will offer web access and high-definition content at a price that would beat the competition by a wide margin.

The prototoype tablet, called Moby, is targeted mainly at students who may be looking for a digital device that could give them access to books and the internet, and could also act as a music player.

The Moby tablet will be powered by Marvell’s ARMADA 600 series of application processors. These chips can offer gigahertz-class speed, says the company. The device will also bring 1080p full-HD capability, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS connectivity and FM radio. Marvell hasn’t disclosed detailed technical specifications for the device.

Marvell is no stranger to offering visions of fantastic gadgets at low, low prices. Last year, it showed a $100 computer inside a wall plug and has tried to popularize the idea of plug computers that would draw just about 5W of power, come with a 1.2-GHz CPU, a USB port and internet connectivity.

Meanwhile, tablets have become all the rage this year. Apple’s iPad will be the first to hit the market on April 3. Other PC makers including HP, Dell and Samsung have also said they plan to release tablets for consumers.

The $100 Moby will support full Adobe Flash and could run either Android or the Windows Phone 7 operating system.

As intriguing as it is, Moby is just a reference design at this point. Marvell hasn’t said if it will manufacture the tablet itself or partner with companies who want to take the design and produce it. Either way, the Moby will be available by the end of the year, says Marvell.

Marvell says it plans to announce a pilot program with the District of Columbia Public School system so students in the system can try out the Moby.

See Also:

• Marvell Plans $100 Computer Inside a Wall Plug
• Marvell Plans $100 Computer Inside a Wall Plug
• Marvell’s Super Speedy 802.11n Chipset Leaves WiMax in the Dust
• Next-Gen Cellphones Will Run 1080p Video and 3D Games

Photo: Moby reference design (Harry McCracken/Technologizer)

Tasktop Pro Named Finalist for 2010 Eclipse Community Awards

IT Leaders from Disney, Shell and Other Top Firms Talk Strategy, Innovation and Business Transformation at HMG Strategy CIO Executive Leadership Roundtable

Video: This is easily the coolest thing I’ve seen an iPhone do this week.

You hear that sound? That’s the sound of my mind being blown.

When the folks over in Cupertino strapped a little speaker to the bottom of the iPhone and released an SDK, do you think that any of them thought “Oh, people are totally going to use this to make apps that can push little Styrofoam balls around a fake soccer field.” Yeah, probably not. But sure enough, people have.

The 99 cent app, Football – Real Kick, is a clever twist on the “blower” concept we’ve seen before. In a nut shell: sound pushes air around. Certain sounds that the iPhone speaker can emit push enough air around that you can just baaaarely feel it, making it just strong enough to blow out a candle — or in this case, blow around a little Styrofoam ball.

Unlike past blower apps, this one doesn’t emit a constant stream. It only putts out air when you tap that “kick” button; combine this with a hand drawn soccer field, a couple of iPhones, and a whole lot of beer, and you’ve got the world’s most expensive game of foosball that doesn’t actually involve a foosball table.

The Great Nintendo DS School Invasion (PC World)

Hands On: Amazon Kindle for the Mac - PC Magazine

Telegraph.co.uk

Hands On: Amazon Kindle for the Mac PC Magazine Finally, Kindle for the Mac is here. Mac OS X versions of e-reader software seem to be an afterthought for sellers of e-books. Unfortunately, this seems to be more of the same. As part of our briefing on IE9 at Microsoft's Redmond campus, we toured the ... TechBytes: eBooks Now Available For MacsABC News First Look: Kindle for MacWired News Amazon Launches Kindle For MacInformationWeek FOXBusiness -The Mac Observer -Ars Technica all 314 news articles »

Another One Bites the Dust at Yahoo: Chief Technologist Sam Pullara Departs for Benchmark [BoomTown]

Yahoo Chief Technologist Sam Pullara (pictured here) is leaving the company to become an Entrepreneur in Residence at Benchmark Capital.

He’s the second major exec to leave Yahoo (YHOO) for greener pastures in a week.

Yahoo’s head of North American Revenue, Joanne Bradford–in charge of the company’s key advertising business–quit Monday to take a top job at social media start-up Demand Media.

In addition, longtime Yahoo tech exec Ash Patel finally left Yahoo for good, which is what BoomTown said was likely in a post about his taking a sabbatical from the company back in November.

After hearing that Pullara is also leaving, BoomTown inquired about his departure earlier in the week and got a call from Yahoo PR today confirming the move.

“Sam Pullara is leaving Yahoo! to pursue a new venture at Benchmark Capital as an EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence). His last day will be April 1st. In his time at Yahoo! Sam made many valuable contributions to our business, helping guide important corporate and business strategy projects and nurturing several technology initiatives. We wish him the best of luck in his new endeavors.”

Pullara is a major tech exec at Yahoo, having run its platforms unit, among other key initiatives.

He also made a statement:

My time at Yahoo! has been a great personal and professional experience. With the social strategy and business development projects I’ve been focusing on now in their implementation phase, and my pet technology project, YQL, now widely deployed both inside and outside of Yahoo!, it’s a natural time for me to transition and spend time with my family before returning to my entrepreneurial roots. I’m leaving Yahoo! with no doubt that the company is on the right track and in good hands.

Well, if you say so, Sam.

Unfortunately, there will be more departures to come from Yahoo, said multiple sources throughout the company, many of whom are key and innovative execs whom Yahoo can ill afford to lose.

Such as Pullara. On his LinkedIn page, Pullara wrote of his role at the Internet giant:

“My current role is within the product strategy group, acting as chief technologist of Yahoo!. I’m responsible for ensuring the products we develop are competitive and provide compelling customer experiences by driving a dialogue between internal products groups, research and business leaders. I am also responsible for technical evaluations, both internal and external, to drive improvements into our products. In addition I will work closely with our M&A team, champion new technology initiatives, and evangelize Yahoo! technology both inside and outside of Yahoo!.”

Here’s the press release from Benchmark:

Sam Pullara Joins Benchmark Capital as Entrepreneur-in-Residence

Menlo Park, CA, March 19, 2010–Benchmark Capital, an early-stage technology venture capital firm, today announced that Sam Pullara has joined the firm as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Pullara was most recently at Yahoo! as Chief Technologist, where he was responsible for Yahoo!’s product and technology strategy across the organization. In addition to his time at Yahoo!, Pullara has spent a significant part of his career building successful start-up companies.

“I am very excited to work with Benchmark Capital, and with Peter Fenton again,” said Pullara. “It is an amazing time to be starting a new venture and advising great entrepreneurs. Working closely with exceptional investors and advisors who are deeply committed to the entrepreneur’s success was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

In addition to crafting corporate technology strategy at Yahoo!, Pullara was also involved in M&A and strategic partnership activity while still remaining an active coder. Before Yahoo!, Pullara was CEO of Gauntlet Systems which was acquired by Borland in 2006. Gauntlet Systems was founded while Pullara was an EIR at Accel Partners. Gauntlet was the outgrowth of Pullara’s experience as an engineer at WebLogic, Inc. where he was an early employee and later at BEA Systems after it acquired WebLogic in 1998. Sam is also an active angel investor and startup advisor.

“Sam is one of the few people who can blend deep technical ability with an uncanny business perspective,” said Peter Fenton, general partner, Benchmark Capital. “He’s one of the most talented people I’ve had the opportunity to work with, and we’re thrilled to have him on board at Benchmark.”

And, for your weekend enjoyment, here’s a video of the most supreme Freddie Mercury of Queen singing “Another One Bites the Dust,” which is, unfortunately, turning into Yahoo’s theme song again:

Yahoo Chief Technologist Sam Pullara Leaves To Become An EIR At Benchmark

One of Yahoo’s key chief technologists, Sam Pullara, is leaving the company to become an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Benchmark Capital. Pullara was the technologist who headed up the development of the the Yahoo! Open Application Platform, the Yahoo! Query Language and Yahoo! Pipes. His departure follows that of veteran Yahoo senior executive Ash Patel earlier this week.

Back in 2008, Yahoo was making a big push to open itself up to developers, and Pullara was one of the champions of that strategy. He was also Yahoo’s representative on the OpenSocial Foundation, which sought to create a counterweight to Facebook.

Pullara has been an EIR before. In 2004, he held that position at Accel Partners and created a startup called Gauntlet Systems, which he sold to Borland in 2006. At Benchmark, he will be looking for new startup opportunities. He will also be working again with Benchmark partner Peter Fenton, who was at Accel when Pullara was there. Pullara’s last day at Yahoo will be on April 1. Yahoo has no plans to hire a replacement.

Today, another Benchmark EIR, former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, was named CEO of Eucalyptus Systems.

Send in your samples to be photographed by a scanning electron microscope

Jeffrey of ASPEX, a producer of scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) and microanalysis software says:

Our company recently kicked off a "Send Us Your Sample" campaign, which allows anyone to mail us an object of their choosing and have it scanned for free under one of our powerful desktop SEMs.

People can send us a piece of clothing, an old toothbrush, or even a dead insect...anything they want to see a picture of under a powerful microscope. It's pretty cool. Once we receive the samples, we'll notify senders of their results via email. You can view other reports we've done here.

Above: a paper tear.

SEM Image Gallery by ASPEX - Send Us Your Sample!


Source: Boing Boing | 19 Mar 2010 | 12:12 pm

Rapid Response Oceanographic Expedition Dispatched To Chile Earthquake Site

Mansion polish: does what it says on the tin

A Windy Link Between Hurricane Basins

Five Tech Investors Reflect on SXSW [Voices]

By Tomio Geron, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Ever since Twitter Inc. broke on the scene at the annual South By Southwest festival three years ago, the techie crowds have multiplied at the Austin conference better known for its film and music. Foursquare Inc., another hot start-up, made noise last year when it launched there. Now that the tech portion of the festival has wrapped up, we asked several investors this week to reflect on the event. Most of them still found the conference useful, particularly to meet people from a variety of technology backgrounds from across the country, even if the events were more crowded than ever.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Google to Leave China by April 10? [Digital Daily]

Palm posts “disappointing” Q3 results

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile

Palm has recently posted their Q3 results, and I hate to say that many people would be surprised by this, but those results were not all that great. In fact, Palm posted a net loss of $22 million dollars. Of course, that loss almost seems good as compared to the $98 million loss that they suffered during Q3 in the previous year.

Putting money aside for a minute and speaking in terms of something that sounds a little more positive—sales. It seems that Palm was able to ship 960,000 smartphones during Q3. Just as a point of reference, Palm saw almost a 300% increase from the previous year. That was the part that sounded good, which means its now time for the disappointing part. These numbers are what Palm shipped, unfortunately the did not necessarily sell them. It seems that only 408,000 units were actually sold.

Overall not a good quarterly report, but perhaps the highlight, or lowlight, depending on whether or not you are rooting for Palm comes in the form of statements from Palm’s CEO Jon Rubinstein.

“Our recent underperformance has been very disappointing, but the potential for Palm remains strong,” said Jon Rubinstein, Palm chairman and chief executive officer. “The work we’re doing to improve sales is having an impact, we’re making great progress on future products, and we’re looking forward to upcoming launches with new carrier partners. Most importantly, we have built a unique and highly differentiated platform in webOS, which will provide us with a considerable - and growing - advantage as we move forward.”

Read [Palm] Via [Silicon Alley Insider] and [Engadget]

Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Hacked Windows Phone 7 emulator demoed on video

Earlier this morning, the Windows Phone 7 emulator was “unlocked” (so to speak), granting anyone with a few spare minutes and basic tinkering abilities an opportunity to get a look at a bunch of stuff Microsoft didn’t originally include.

Not everyone is prepped and ready to get their hack on, though. Maybe you’re on a Mac. Maybe it’s Friday and you just don’t feel like doing anything. Understandable. Fortunately for you, a couple of videos demonstrating all the hacked ROM have been flying around the Intertubes.

The first one comes from PocketNow, who’s had a pretty strong chokehold on this story from the beginning:

The second (and freakishly huge) video comes from the fine folks at TechAU:

New Velociraptor Relative Discovered

CERN Establishes New Beam Energy Record

Whales May Change Color with Age, Stress

Windows Phone 7 emulator hacked. Sweet, sweet secrets spill out.

As anyone in the history of ever who has ever written a single line of code that might be subject to hacking knows, the only way to keep something “hidden” in an application is to just not include it at all. Sure, you can obfuscate the hell out of it out in the source code, or add some crazy configuration value that enables it; just don’t expect either of those to work for much longer than 5 minutes.

Either the WP7 team didn’t get that memo, or they’re perfectly comfortable with people unlocking a bunch of features in the emulator that didn’t come enabled by default.

A gent who’s now looking to have his name removed from the project managed to tear apart the ROM included with the WP7 development tools and flip a few switches that shouldn’t necessarily have been switched. Where as the original emulator set up would only show Internet Explorer and a tile or two, the hacked ROM brings out the Live Tiles, Voice Search, and Hubs. Better yet, it shows off a few fancy new features that have never been seen, including a file explorer and a task manager.

Pocketnow has a nice little write-up on how to get the hacked ROM up and running in your own emulator – but if you’re not feeling too tinkery, check out the shots of the file manager and task manager below.

Appletell reviews ProOnGo Expense for iPhone

FROM APPLETELL - ProOnGo Expense with Receipt Reader is an application designed to make tracking your expenses on the iPhone both painless and powerful.
MORE »

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

Ready for Windows Mobile 6.5 on your Sprint Touch Pro2? The upgrade is now available

Here it is, folks! Its been a few long months for Sprint fans toting Touch Pro2’s, given that the same device on all of the other carriers saw upgrades to Windows Mobile 6.5 months ago while their own Pro2s stayed back at WinMo 6.1. We knew the update was coming sometime in March, and then we pinned the date down to some more specific: today.

Sure enough, the update went live. So go, go young Pro2 carrier, and let the warm rays of Windows Mobile 6.5 breath new life into your Touch Pro2. (Download link here) Better yet, hack Android onto it.

Geneva Atom Smasher Sets Record for Beam Energy

Palm: We coulda been a contender

In Greek tragedy, the flaw of hubris was the decisive plot point that brought down many great men. Palm, then, is the Oedipus of a modern tragedy, their efforts to rebuild hampered by a failure to see past their own greatness and a refusal to enter the market on the market’s terms.

To be honest, I was a Palm fan, then I wasn’t a Palm fan, and now am part of the chorus of voices bemoaning the lowly state to which the company has been thrust. Palm recently reported $349 million in revenue with a third quarter loss of $102.8 million. Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein said:

“If we could have launched at Verizon prior to the Droid, I think we would have gotten the attention the Droid got. And since I believe we have a better product, I think we could have even done better.”

That’s right: when the going gets rough, blame outside forces. Palm had a huge build-up at CES when the Palm Pre was first announced and now they’re taking a page from Apple’s playbook and boosting the Pre and Pixi Plus devices with some memory and processing power. Sadly, what’s good for the goose isn’t always good for the gander, especially when the gander is losing profits. Palm shipped 960,000 units last quarter and, as Giz points out, sold 400,000 of them. Someone is buying Palm handsets, but 400,000 isn’t a big number.

Palm needs to sell itself. Their IP is strong and their brand is strong and well-known. Someone like HTC could take Palm and run with it, bringing Palm’s social-media connected OS to a whole new set of consumers. But things need to change and quickly.

Yet another virus targeting Facebook users

Section: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking

Another virus attack is targeting Facebook users. An email with the subject “Facebook Password Reset Confirmation” is being sent to users of the popular social networking site and the message body reads:

Dear user of facebook,
Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed. You can find your new password in the attached document.
Thanks,
Your Facebook.

Obviously the message is a complete fake, and the attachment contains a virus. Fortunately most users should be able to spot this as such and avoid being infected. Whoever is behind this attack obviously either couldn’t be bothered to make it look the least bit legit or was too ignorant to do so because the poor grammar, generic greeting, and nonsensical sign off are immediate red flags. A legit email from a site you do business with or have an account with will address you by either your full name or username and will NEVER address you as “Dear User”.  They will also never send you attachments and if they do need to change your password they will direct you to the site to log in and change it.

It’s important to keep your anti-virus program up to date, and make sure your passwords are unique and hard to guess. Avoid clicking on links that contain mostly gibberish and delete any emails claiming to be from sites you have an account on or do business with if they are badly written with poor grammar and generic greetings.

Read [AllFacebook]

Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Estimating Ethanol Yields From CRP Croplands

BlackBerry slider gets a codename of Talladega, and rumors of an April release

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

  Up until now we have seen a decent amount of images of the BlackBerry slider, as well as a rumor that it was going to become available with Sprint. And now the latest in the BlackBerry Slider story is suggesting that it will be available as of next month. Oh, and it also seems as if has been given a codename—Talladega.

The details of the rumored release come by way of a CEO of a RIM parts supplier who mentioned that RIM would be releasing a new model next month, and that it was known as the “T.”

Of course, nothing here is official, nor has it been confirmed. But by coincidence, RIM does have a trade show that is going to take place in April from the 27th to the 29th. So maybe we will see an official announcement for the Talladega slider.

Read [Engadget] Image courtesy [BB Leaks]

Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Songbirds Provide Insight Into Speech Production

Sad Clown: Users having problems with the touchscreens on the AT&T Nexus One?

We’ve had a few interesting reports of folks having huge problems with the AT&T Nexus Ones. Here we see a lad tap-tap-tapping away, unable to get anything pressed.

Anyone else having issues?

Blackberry 6.0 screens leaked?

I’m calling BS on these but it looks like these are screenshots for BlackBerry OS 6.0 complete with widgets out the wazoo. Clearly the thought here is to bring BB into the 21st century, a move that’s sorely needed by BlackBerry’s current sad sack OS. The fact that there are no other specs point to some kind of leaked app and little more.

via BBLeaks

'Glow-in-the-dark' Sperm Sheds Light On Sexual Selection

Scoot-Along Lawn-Mower Lazier Than it Seems

Spring is upon us, and as the days lengthen and we venture out into the world after our pizza-n-TiVo hibernation, we are confronted with the dual problems of extra belly-fat and extra long lawn-grass. A clever invention could take care of both these modern scourges in one go, but instead offers a kind of poor-man’s layzee-mow.

The Lawn Mower Scooter has an electric motor which drives both the blades and the scooter itself. As you stand on the rear footplate and desperately try not to lose your balance, the mower chugs forward, filling the grass-box until the trimmings come into view through the window on top. At this point, you will actually have to use some energy, perhaps calling one of the kids over to empty the box.

It’s a rather flimsy-looking design, and disappointing that it isn’t more human-powered. When I was a lad, I had to mow the lawns with a push-along monster that weighed a lot more than me. The blades were spun by gears connected to the wheels, wheels which would slip on the damp grass and send me tumbling towards the whirling blades every few yards. It never did me any harm (apart from the loss of my nose), and I think that the modern home-gardener could also do with shedding a few pounds with a sporty manual mower.

The Lawn Mower Scooter currently only exists in the garden seen above, and in the fevered, neat-freak mind of the inventor Vicky Petihovski.

Lawn Mower Scooter [Yanko via Ubergizmo]

Female Leafcutter Ants Halt Sperm Competition

Amazon/Apple war looming with publishers caught in the middle

Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks

The ebook war between Amazon and Apple is beginning to heat up, with Amazon insisting publishers agree to a list of demands that includes signing a 3 year contract and guaranteeing that no other book retailer will get a better deal. At the same time Apple’s terms for allowing those same publishers to sell ebooks in the upcoming iBookstore mandate that they not sell those same books anywhere else for a lower price. Amazon is the top ebook seller because of its $9.99 price point, which has since begun to deteriorate thanks to Macmillan’s insistence on raising the prices of its ebooks to between $12.99-$14.99. For a short time Amazon tried to play hard ball by removing the buy button from every single Macmillan paper and ebook title, but eventually gave in. Now it seems all publishers will find themselves caught in a tug of war between the online retail giant and Apple, and Apple probably has the upper hand because it lets them set their own prices. The publishing industry is still woefully ignorant about ebooks and sees them as some kind of threat instead of a blessing, convinced they hurt sales rather than increase them. Since I and everyone I know who owns an e-reader have actually found themselves buying MORE books since getting it than we did when we were only buying paper books, obviously they’re wrong.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the coming weeks and months because it seems impossible for both Apple and Amazon to get what they want.

Read [NYTimes]

Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Tryptophan Helps Reduce Pig Aggression

HP Slate: About $500, Atom Processor, June Launch

Spanish gadget blog Clipset has the details of the upcoming HP Slate, with some quick hands-on time too. Previously, then Slate has only been seen in a teaser video promo.

First, the price. The Slate will apparently be €400, which translates literally to $543, but is likely to be less in the US. Clipset says this puts it in a range between netbook and iPad, although really we still don’t have an official iPad price for Europe. As to the hardware, the blog reports that there will be USB ports, a memory card reader (presumably SD), an Intel Atom processor and, weirdly, a camera on the back. It is also noted that the machine is “fatter” than the iPad, and feels more like a netbook conversion than a purpose-built, enlarged iPhone.

The Slate certainly looks nice, but if HP thinks it can slap Windows 7 into a pretty little glass and metal slab and have a chance, its dead wrong. It won’t work, as we saw with the Stantum tablet last week: Win 7 is a desktop OS, designed for a keyboard and mouse, not a fat finger. If the OS has somehow been tweaked or skinned, then HP may have a slim chance.

The Slate will be launched in June.

Probamos el tablet de HP que competirá con el iPad, el Slate [Clipset]

Earliest Signature of Renaissance Artist Raphael Found in Painting

Cardboard Record Sleeve Transforms Into Record Player

You’re sick of tinny, vapid MP3s. You’d go back to CDs, only you tossed them and you haven’t the stomach to re-buy them over again. Besides, where’s the warmth and romance in a silver disk? So you decide to try vinyl, but that means buying a turntable, amp, speakers… Lord, what a hassle. Or is it? Get record from GGRP Sound, and it comes with its own record-player, made from the sleeve itself.

GGRP (Griffiths, Gibson and Ramsay Productions) is a marketing company, and the record/player is a mail-out promo. When opened, you unfold the sleeve to make a flat base with a triangle of corrugated cardboard above. A needle is joined to this top part and when you spin the record with a pencil (just like rewinding a cassette!), the needle passes the vibes up to the cardboard “speaker”.

“It’s actually shocking how good the sound quality is,” says Geoff Dawson of Grey Vancouver, who made the device. The low-tech sound machine is wonderful, and it reminds us of days when we could actually see how our technology worked. Now books, too, are set to be converted into invisible, unfathomable bits, the last of the analog media is dying. Imagine when future space-aliens discover the artifacts of our long-dead civilization and sift through the evidence. They will be able to decode our culture up to this decade, and that will be all. Even the TV signals are digital, although I guess the aliens never really need to see America’s Next Top Model.

Grey spins vinyl hits for GGRP [Marketing Mag via Core77]

British Plant To Build Nissan Leaf Electric Car

Researchers Create Small Scale Invisibility Cloak

Concept Notebook Has Handle and Stand

Remember the old toilet-seat iBook from Apple? What’s that, you’d done your best to forget it? Yeah, us too. Sorry to dig up those bad old memories. The point, though, is that the candy-colored computer had a handle, and despite its aesthetic flaws, a notebook with a handle is, well, handy. Zhang Shouze’s Playing By Heart* concept adds a handle and manages to keep it looking good.

The fold-out handle has a cleverly angled cross-member that lets it lay flat on the lid when you don’t need it, but also sits flat on the desk should you decide to invoke its other personality, that of a bracket. In this mode, it’ll raise the screen from the desk and set the keyboard at an angle, all while letting the cooling breeze waft underneath – just like a bulky third-party notebooks stand, only built-in.

Thankfully there is a central plastic section to the aluminum strip so the angled handle won’t cut into your fingers as you carry it, and the top edge of the screen-bezel has a lip which droops over the base when closed and should help protect against bumps. For a concept design, this is surprisingly practical.

Laptop Morphs Into A Briefcase [Yanko]

*Nope. No idea either.

Cat Fur Puts Criminals Behind Bars

Simplest and Best? The MoviePeg iPhone Stand

This is the MoviePeg, and it’s the simplest gadget you’ll see this week, and possibly, like, ever. The MoviePeg is no more than a little plastic rectangle with a notch cut from one side. This notch matches the thickness and radius of your iPhone’s edge, and forms a snug stand.

We love it. You can use it as a kind of tripod to keep the iPhone completely vertical for photos, or prop the phone at almost any angle both in portrait and landscape mode, for watching movies, reading, turning the phone into an alarm clock, pretty much anything that doesn’t require laying the iPhone on its back.

Could you make your own? Sure, but at £5 (it’s made in the UK) or around $10 shipped to the US, why bother? I was filling out my credit card details before I remembered I don’t have an iPhone (seriously), so I hope an iPod Touch version comes soon.

Simple, effective and colorful. Did we mention the colors? Holy spectrum! I’ll take the pink one.

MoviePeg [Movie Peg via ★]

Idapt Gadget Dock Charges Almost Anything

Idapt’s new i4 is a charging dock for pretty much all of your gadgets. Like the company’s previous stations, the dock reduces cable-clutter, but this time it does it in shiny, piano-black style.

The hot-looking dock plugs into the mains and sits on your desk or night-stand. In the top are three virgin sockets, into which you can insert various “tips”. These are analogous to the dock inserts in Apple’s universal dock, only they also carry circuitry and connectors for various devices. If you have a vanilla USB-powered gadget, there’s a hole for that, too, hidden down at the side.

The tips fit most kinds of cellphone, the Nintendo DS, the PSP, the iPhone, all sizes of USB and one is even a charger for AA and AAA batteries. It even has an off-switch so you don’t have to yank the cord from the wall. The only problem might be the price. At $60, the i4 isn’t bad, but you’ll need to buy tips, either at around $15 each or in packs which start at $40 for 4.

The i4 also comes in white, available in May.

IDAPT Unveils i4 Universal Charging Solution [Max Borges. Thanks, Valerie!]

Idapt store [Idapt]

Turbulence Tamed in Water Pipes

Is There Water On The Moon? Bucketloads.