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Readings: False Recovery, Corn, California, Default, Next Big Thing, etc.Welcome to the False Recovery (Source) Could debt send California the way of Greece?(Source) L.A. Controller Says City Could Run Out of Cash by May 5 (Source) Zingales on the menace of strategy...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 4:12 am Google asks users to fix its Buzz - Inquirer
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 Apr 2010 | 4:06 am Why California Pension Managers Shouldn't Be Allowed Near MoneyFrom a new SIEPR report on the grotesque pension underfunding problems at California's major plans, a chart comparing the stated and adjusted shortfalls at CalPERS, et al. Source: Going For Broke: Reforming...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 4:03 am ECRI Looks Ahead: More (Recessions), More (Inflation), More (Unemployment)The folks at ECRI are optimistically pessimistic, or pessimistically optimistic, or something like that. Either way, worth a look. 1003-NYC No SecuritySource: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 3:57 am Want More Followers On Twitter? Make Sure You Have A Profile Picture
Marketing software maker HubSpot has analyzed close to 9 million Twitter profiles based on data collected through its Twitter Grader tool, and has come to the conclusion that accounts with a profile picture average about 10 times more followers than those without. That on itself is not so surprising; a Twitter profile associated with the default avatar generally screams ‘newbie’, which is generally an incentive not to follow someone unless you know that person in real life or on other social networks. There’s a good reason why spammers who create fake Twitter accounts tend to include pictures in profiles – it’s human nature to instantly trust personalized online accounts more than generic ones. But we love stats here at TechCrunch, so here you go:
(Via Mike Volpe, who has a pretty good profile picture)      
Source: TechCrunch | 6 Apr 2010 | 3:33 am New Hitachi tech to double lithium-ion battery life
Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, powering small gadgets, cars or even buildings. It’s not a surprise to see a number of companies currently working on improvements. Just a few weeks ago, we reported about Japan-based Eamex, which claimed their prototype battery can be charged and discharged over 10,000 times and can be used for about 20 years. And now Hitachi is claiming a new material they developed could double the life span of lithium ion batteries. The company has partnered up with Shin-Kobe Electric Machinery, saying batteries based on the material could be used in smart grid applications (Hitachi says that segment alone will be worth $32 billion by 2020). The battery’s positive electrode will not use expensive cobalt, but manganese, which is much cheaper. Hitachi claims the “secret sauce” of the new battery is a metal additive, which will boost its life span to 10 years, double that of existing manganese lithium-ion batteries. The company announced it’s expecting to have the new battery and peripheral equipment ready as early as fiscal 2010, which, under the Japanese calendar, will end at the end of March 2011. Hitachi also says the battery can not only be used in smart grid applications but also might find its way into construction machinery and hybrid vehicles in the future (pictured above is a Hitachi-made lithium-ion battery for those vehicles announced last year). Via The Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]
Source: CrunchGear | 6 Apr 2010 | 3:21 am Paltel Announces Cash Dividends Distribution of US$0.49per Share Amounting to US$64.98mn During its General AssemblySource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 3:19 am Hollow-Legged Table Clears Cables
If you were a kid growing up in England at a certain time in recent history, and you ate more than seemed possible, your grandmother would say this to you: “My. You must have hollow legs!” Every. Single. Time. If only I had had this concept desk to parry this incessant “joke”. The table, called the aTable, does indeed have hollow legs. Moreover, these hollow legs are open at both ends, puncturing the table-top like a wormhole in space and allowing computer cables to run down the pipes to the floor. The aTable is fashioned from glass-reinforced plastic for extra stiffness, and the legs are actually removable, making this a prime candidate for Ikea (just like the lamp clamped to it in the picture). The design comes from the wonderfully named Beatus Kopp, a graduate of the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, and is sadly unavailable to buy. The child me would have loved this table for another reason, too: you could easily scoop your soft, gray, over-boiled vegetables down the shoot. I’m ready for dessert, mom! aTable by Beatus Kopp [Dezeen via Oh Gizmo!] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 Apr 2010 | 3:16 am 26% of Tweets Express Disappointment That iPad Can't Replace iPhoneSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 3:02 am Another Contender For the Land Speed RecordWe've been following developments with the British-led Bloodhound-SSC, a jet car aiming to hit 1,000 mph in 2011 and shatter the land speed record. Now reaer Thea Chard writes in about a rival project from Washington state, one aiming at 800 mph before the end of 2010 — still plenty fast enough to break the record. "For the past 12 years Ed Shadle, 68, Keith Zanghi, 55, and their 44-man team have been racing to break the world land speed record with the North American Eagle, a converted 1957 F-104 Starfighter 'turbojet car.' Although the team is rushing to beat out their biggest contender, Bloodhound SSC from Great Britain, whose team leader holds the previous land speed record and has secured much more financial support for the project, Shadle and Zanghi hope to run the Eagle at around 800 mph later this year, breaking the sound barrier and setting a new world record for fastest land vehicle."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 Apr 2010 | 2:57 am Seats 3D Shows The View From Your SeatBy Evan Ackerman Seats 3D is a website that provides virtual views of all kinds of athletic arenas, concert halls, and other event venues. Who cares? You care! Next time you buy a ticket to something,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 2:46 am TSMC Delivers Interoperable EDA Formats for Advanced Process TechnologiesSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 2:30 am Apple's iPad - 'Will It Blend?' - Register
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 Apr 2010 | 2:03 am Frost & Sullivan Acknowledges AZUR SPACE's World-Class Solar CellsSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 2:00 am Hide Your Cables In The Legs Of This Concept TableBy Chris Scott Barr I love technology, but I hate all of the wires that seem to be necessary. Sure, I’ve got wireless keyboards and wireless networking, but there are still plenty of others that...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:55 am VASCO Data Security Launches DIGIPASS Pack for Remote Authentication Including DIGIPASS for MobileSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:54 am Will BermanBraun and Hachette Give MSN a New "Glo" With Launch of a Dramatically Different Women's Site? [BoomTown]
It’s more than a little ironic that the new “Glo” Web site–a highly stylized women’s lifestyle destination that MSN just debuted after midnight today, in partnership with Hollywood’s BermanBraun and Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S.–will likely be one of the online media sites that will shine best on the new Apple (AAPL) iPad. Even though it was conceived before the tablet was even announced and also currently uses Apple-barred Adobe (ADBE) Flash in its headline rendering (soon to be adjusted), Glo is actually more aimed at upending the notion of what makes a good women-focused Web site. With a vertical sweep, simple clean lines and a swoosh navigation bar, it’s just the kind of new Internet sensibility informed almost entirely by touch, feel and–most especially–visual elements. And, while it has a decidedly glossy magazine tone, Glo is also more heavily laced with tools such as online scrapbooks and is strongly social, with deep links into Facebook and Twitter. Of course, since it is a Microsoft (MSFT) property, Glo also was required to make copious use of its Bing search engine, links to which are constantly present and mostly useful. Glo is the second dramatic site designed, created and run by the Los Angeles-based production company run by former Yahoo (YHOO) media chief and well-known television exec Lloyd Braun and his business partner Gail Berman. The first was a very different kind of celebrity site, Wonderwall, whose consumer engagement metrics have pleased advertisers so much that the MSN ordered up another one aimed at fashion, decor, relationships and beauty. “Obviously design plays a huge role in all we do,” said Braun in an interview with BoomTown yesterday. “We think there is an enormous opportunity to create content and program in a very different way.” Braun said the site was trying to approximate the “endorphin release” that occurs when women get a new fashion magazine their hands. Berman agreed. “There is something very powerful about the connection you can establish with a magazine that has not yet been replicated online as well,” she said. “We are aiming to have a true voice to reach this kind of level of emotional connection with our readers.” To help that along, as part of the deal with MSN, announced in December, magazine giant Hachette–publisher of Elle, Woman’s Day and Elle Decor–is providing content and editorial expertise to Glo. There will be seven “packages” a day, with access to archival content too. Like Wonderwall, Glo will aggregate original, Hachette and third-party content content from a variety of partners, but have a voice that its new Executive Editor Anne Weintraub–who has been online director for Elle magazine–called “inspirational and also aspirational” and with a heavy dose of imagery. Instead of the unusual horizontal design with a scrolling wall of Wonderwall, though, Glo goes steeply vertical, although still using a plethora of images and a deeply visual sensibility to attract the eye. “We are trying to grab the reader in a different way, through linear narration,” she said in an interview yesterday. “And we also want the women who read it to feel that they are one step away in terms of aspirations, that we reflect their reality on a really good day of theirs.” The business plan, of course, is advertising. The companies said MSN will lead the advertising sales efforts along with HFM U.S. on selected accounts, with JCPenney, Vaseline and Fox Broadcasting Company (think “Glee” and you get the demo being targeted) as inaugural advertisers. “Advertisers have been looking for premium content opportunities online and they really are not there in this important space compared to what’s out there in print, for example,” said MSN U.S. head Scott Moore. “Like the celebrity category, we see a lot of room to grow by offering something different and of higher quality.” Todd Anderman, SVP for Digital Media at HFM, which already has Web sites for its well-known magazines, noted that the company was in uncharted territory. “This is a new brand for all three of us,” he said. Here are some screenshots from today’s debut (click on the images to make them larger), as well as the full press release below:
Source: All Things Digital | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:50 am The Black Hole That Ate My EarthJust for fun -- and for all you 2012 Mayan calendar and Nostradamus doomsday soothsayers -- what would happen if the LHC went haywire and a permanent black hole were really made?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:42 am Facebook Whisperer Speaks About Why Facebook Threatened to Sue Him [Voices]By Cliff Kuang, Writer, Fast Company Pete Warden’s been called the “Facebook Whisperer,” because of an unusual hobby he took up more than a year ago. Using simple Web crawling software, he assembled a database of 210 million Facebook public profiles: Names, “fan” pages, friend listings, and locations. He then used that data to find, for example, where “God” was the top fan site, the geographic reach of virtual social networks, and more. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:37 am Nissan Sentra SE-R 1/10th Scale CommercialBy Andrew Liszewski You’d think a commercial that featured a 1/10th scale RC model of the car they were trying to sell would be about 1/10th as exciting as seeing the real thing, but Nissan Canada’s...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:35 am Why Does Everyone Want to Work at AOL All of a Sudden? [Voices]By Michael Learmonth, Senior Editor, Advertising Age AOL (AOL) is the most-troubled big internet company, a turn-around job with a speculative future. So why, then, does it seem everyone wants to work there? The company is snagging talent from all sectors: Wall Street, publishing, consulting, Google (GOOG), Yahoo (YHOO), social-news aggregator Digg, Time Warner and even its own huge diaspora of former employees, some of whom have chosen to come back. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:33 am India. Voice calling gets the news to rural villagersMobileActive.org reports on projects in India, whereby news updates are distributed through voice calls. Widespread illiteracy makes newspapers and SMS alerts inadequate as news delivery systems, and...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:31 am Aggregators Help Media Professionals Keep on Top of Digital Content Trends [Voices]By Kevin Anderson, Reporter, Guardian The internet is not like trying to drink from a firehose but rather like trying to drink from Niagara Falls. For any media professional trying to remain up to speed on digital content trends, it is often overwhelming. I’ve had to develop a lot of methods and constantly change the tools I use to manage this torrent of information. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:29 am Research Roundup: Bubbles, Surfing, BMI, Secretaries, Natural Resources, etc.Some recent NBER papers worth a scan: Leverage and Asset Bubbles: Averting Armageddon with Chapter 11? (Source) Recruiting for Ideas: How Firms Exploit the Prior Inventions of New Hires (Source)...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:28 am Hollywood Unveils Armchair Revolutionary(TM) Website Allowing Individuals to Support Science and Technology Innovations Through Social Gaming PlatformSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:28 am Daring Fawnyball [Voices]By Joe Clark, Blogger, Daring Fawneyball At a certain point, you have to admit you aren’t good enough to do something better than an expert could do it even if the technical option exists for you to give it a shot anyway. While people will tolerate a lot of things, what we want are beautiful things that work well. There aren’t many nonexperts who can accomplish that. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:22 am Antenna failure hampers crew's shuttle inspection - The Associated Press
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:21 am Robot Skeleton Is DIY Sidekick for Late-Show Host [Voices]By Hugh Hart, Blogger, Wired, Underwire Late-night talk show host Craig Ferguson routinely mocks CBS (CBS) for being too cheap to pay for decent lighting, a band or a second banana. The lights may still be dim, and there’s no band in sight, but starting Monday the Scottish-born cut-up will have a robot skeleton sidekick to guffaw obediently at the push of a button. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:14 am Cisco upgrades servers as it competes with HP, IBM (Reuters)Reuters - Network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc said on Tuesday it was upgrading its servers, stepping up competition against more established players in the market like HP and IBM.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:09 am Lijit Networks Exceeds Half Billion Monthly PageviewsSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:01 am Daily Crunch: Bear Test Edition
Remember the Linux wristwatch?
Source: CrunchGear | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am Facebook Implements Insider-Trading Policy [Voices]By Jessica E. Vascellaro, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal Facebook has prohibited its employees from selling their shares to other investors, its latest attempt to clamp down on the selling of its stock on secondary markets. The company announced the new policy last week, say people familiar with the matter. The policy says employees who sell their shares could face disciplinary action or be fired, one of these people said. The new rule also leaves room for the company to open a trading window during which employees would be allowed to sell shares in the future. Facebook spokesman Larry Yu said the company implemented the “insider trading policy to better comply with insider trading laws and to protect the interests of the company and its employees and shareholders.” Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am World Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK) Consumption to Grow at an Average Annual Rate of 1.9% According to Recently Updated Report at MarketPublishers.comSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am NTT Europe and New Partner Flumotion to Offer State-of-the-art Streaming ServicesSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 1:00 am Is permission needed to retweet hot news?Copyright law doesn't cover facts or ideas... except when they are "hot news." News organizations now want a federal law expanding this court-created right to the entire country, but a pair of professors...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 12:57 am UN chief urges restraint in Central Asia water disputeUN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday urged restraint in a growing dispute between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan over the fate of a massive Tajik hydro-electric dam project. Ban, in...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 6 Apr 2010 | 12:52 am OpenTTD 1.0.0 ReleasedGmer writes "Eming.com reports that OpenTTD, the open source clone of the Microprose game Transport Tycoon Deluxe, has reached a milestone. OpenTTD 1.0.0 has been released 6 years after work started on the first version, with the help of hundreds of contributors and thousands of testers/players. Over 30 language translations are considered complete, and OpenTTD is available for *BSD, Linux, Solaris and Windows. OpenTTD is a business simulation game in which the player is in control of a transport company and can compete against rival companies to make as much profit as possible by transporting passengers and various goods by road, rail, sea or air."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 Apr 2010 | 12:51 am John Doerr: The Next Big Thing
It’s hard to imagine that once there was no Internet. Just 15 years ago there was no browser, no web point-and-click. It was 1994, and Steve Jobs had left Apple. Steve was making Toy Story, and object-oriented software for Next. Then one day Bill Joy showed me a beta version of Mosaic, the FIRST web browser. It was magic. Bill said “John, I have NO idea where this is going. You just better dive in.” The rest of the 90’s were a ONCE-in-a-lifetime experience. Entrepreneurs created the Web, and great ventures – Netscape, Amazon, Ebay, Google, and others. And they changed our lives. Silicon Valley became the Florence of the New, Networked Economy. The advent of the iPad feels like deja-vu, like it’s happening all over again. Not once, but TWICE-in-a-lifetime. Inventing The FutureNewsweek put it best… “Steve has the uncanny ability to cook up gadgets we didn’t know we needed… but suddenly can’t live without.” Steve showed us what computer legend Alan Kay told us… namely, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” At Kleiner Perkins we say “If you can’t INVENT the future, the next best thing… is to FUND it.” The iFundSo two years ago Apple and Kleiner Perkins announced an unexpected collaboration: the $100 million iFund. The best venture fund for mobile entrepreneurs. Think back to March 6, 2008. The iFund idea was risky – some thought crazy. There was no 3G iPhone. No apps. No appstore. And no iFund. Today the iFund is 14 ventures. 3 are stealth. We are proud to have backed great entrepreneurs in communications, gaming, publishing, media, mobile advertising, and mobile commerce. The iFund companies include:
Each of these companies has received capital from the iFund and participated in bi-annual iFund Summits with other founders, CEOs and industry leaders. Through this network, we’ve seen phenomenal collaboration between iFund companies and tremendous learning in a space that evolves rapidly and changes daily. iFund ventures have had well over 100 million downloads. And we expect more than $100 million in revenue from these companies this year. We’ve already committed $100 million, and raised another $330 million from others. That’s almost ½ billion dollars.
Good News – Bad NewsThat’s the good news. Truly good news. But the bad news – is that at the worst possible time, on eve of the iPad, the iFund is out of money. The first rule of venture capital is (to quote my friend Coach Campbell) is…“you gotta have the friggin’ money.” It’s hard to be a venture capitalist if you don’t have the money. Doubling DownSo we’re doubling down on the iFund, increasing its size to $200 million dollars. Here’s the real reason why… The original PCs in the early 80’s were pretty crummy, that is, until 1984 when Apple introduced the mouse and the Mac… Back then Alan Kay, inventor of the Dynabook tablet, said “The Mac is the first PC worth criticizing.” Fast forward to 2007. When Steve introduced the iPhone, Alan Kay told him “Steve, make the screen size 5 by 8 inches and you’ll rule the world.” Welcome, iPadOn Saturday (April 3) the iPad arrived. We believe it will rule the world. I’ve touched it, held it, and caressed it. It feels gorgeous. It feels like touching the future. It is not a big iPod. But it IS a very big deal.
The New WorldWe’re going from the Old World to a brave New World.
The iPad is the beginning of the New World, the post-PC era. One More Thing… The FutureApril’s iPad shipment is just the beginning. It is truly, just a beginning. Twice in the last 15 years we’ve witnessed 100,000 flowers blooming. Flowers of applications for the Web, and then for the iPhone. Both were paradigm shifts in how we interact. Here comes the third shift: interacting fluidly on full and fast screens with vast information stored locally. And that will start a third renaissance of software. Beyond BrowsersIt’s time to move beyond spreadsheets and word processors, beyond web sites limited by browsers… to interactive, connected applications with incredible simplicity, speed, and fluidity. To a future that transforms games and entertainment, education and publishing, healthcare, communications and commerce. And almost everything else. The tablet, the iPad is where these new dreams will blossom. And where the revolution is happening. Much More PerformanceBill Joy says the key to more performance is lower power. Over the next decade he sees 3 times better batteries, and 10 times lower power chips. So we should be able to run, for the same price, 30 times as much application. And as for storage, there’s no reason that can’t be 30x also. Or, about a terabyte of local, faster, solid state storage. (A terabyte is several hundred movies) Interpersonal SurfacesWhat’s important is the new ways tablet computers will be used. They won’t just be reactive, responding to commands. They’ll also be proactive. They will be much more than personal computers. They’ll be interpersonal surfaces and services. Working seamlessly, unobtrusively, and comfortably in the spaces between us, between you and me and others. To iPADdicts and Entrepreneurs…I like to define entrepreneurs this way: Entrepreneurs do MORE than anyone thinks possible. With LESS than anyone thinks possible. At Kleiner we’re awed by entrepreneurs. They surprise us with the improbable – they don’t know what’s impossible. So to Steve, Supreme Commander of the Rebel Forces, and to the entrepreneurs at Apple, congratulations! To iPADdicts and entrepreneurs everywhere: there’s never been a better time than now to start or join a new venture, and launch a new application or service. Whether you’re seeking $50K or a few million or a great job… contact us. John Doerr, jdoerr@kpcb.com Aileen Lee, alee@kpcb.com +1 650 233-2750 Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 6 Apr 2010 | 12:41 am Three submit binding offers to buy AOL's ICQ: report (Reuters)Reuters - Russia's ProfMedia and DST as well as China's Tencent have submitted binding offers to buy AOL's instant-messaging service ICQ, business daily Vedomosti reported on Tuesday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 Apr 2010 | 12:09 am Venture Funding Doubled To $12.8 Billion In First Quarter
Venture capital is flowing once again to startups at a steady pace. During the first quarter of 2010, the total value of venture funding doubled to $12.8 billion from $6 billion a year before, when it was scraping the bottom of the barrel. However, the funding amount is down 16 percent from the $15.3 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, based on an analysis of CrunchBase data. Some of the venture rounds during the first quarter include Sonos (http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/12/sonos-confirms-25-million-investment-from-index-ventures/), betaworks ($20 million), Hunch ($12 million), and Posterous ($4.4 million). All in all, there were 1,201 fundings recorded in CrunchBase, during the quarter, up 77 percent from a year before, when there were 679. Compared to the fourth quarter, the sheer number of funding rounds was down 5 percent. While venture capital hasn’t exactly come roaring back, it is very much alive and kicking. Deals are getting done, which is an encouraging sign.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 6 Apr 2010 | 12:09 am Vietnam denies involvement with cyberattacks - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 Apr 2010 | 12:04 am Grounded Russian Nuclear Sub Photographed With SonarLanxon sends in an intriguing piece from Wired: "This eerie wreck image is not computer generated. It's the sonar image of Russian nuclear submarine B-159 (called K-159 before decommissioning), which has been lying 248m down in the Barents Sea, between Norway and Russia, since 2003. The Russian Federation hired Adus, a Scottish company that specializes in high-resolution sonar surveying, to evaluate if it would be possible to recover the wreck. 'The operation was complicated as the submarine was very deep, so we had to use the sonar equipment mounted on a remotely operated vehicle' [also pictured in the article], says Martin Dean, the managing director of Adus and a forensic-wreck archaeologist. 'We also had a problem with the surveying due to the density of north Atlantic cod attracted to the sound of the sonar and the light of the cameras.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Apr 2010 | 11:32 pm Microsoft to Unveil 'Pink' Mobile Phones - Wall Street Journal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 11:20 pm Blue Roses' "Doubtful Comforts" 3D Music Video Doesn't Require Special Glasses, Just A Couple Of AspirinsBy Andrew Liszewski If I learned one thing at CES this year, it’s that someone, somewhere, desperately wants us all to be watching videos and movies in 3D. And I’m not particularly against...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Apr 2010 | 11:08 pm Mickey Mouse's first speaking roleWhile watching vintage Mickey Mouse cartoons on YouTube, my son and I happened upon this 1929 delight. The Karnival Kid is Mickey's first ever speaking role, finding his voice with the powerful words "Hot dogs!" Of course, "Hot dog!" would go on to become one of Mickey's trademark catchphrases. The Karnival Kid also stars the lovely and talented Minnie Mouse, as the Shimmy Dancer. Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 11:02 pm HP Slate pricing, specs reportedly revealed - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:57 pm "Oriental Yeti" captured
According to The Times, this unusual animal was captured in the Sichuan province in remote central China. Nicknamed "the oriental yeti," the unidentified animal is on its way to Beijing for DNA tests. "There are local legends of a bear that used to be a man and some people think that's what we caught," one of the hunters said. I dunno... Looks to me like a hairless bear. Besides, everyone knows that real Yetis look like this. "'Oriental yeti' that looks like a bear without fur shipped for tests" (Thanks, Xeni!) Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:50 pm MGMT: Andreas Nilsson vs. HP LovecraftAndreas Nilsson's positively Lovecraftian music video for MGMT's "Flash Delirium," from their new record Congratulations. (Thanks, Rodney Ascher!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:49 pm History of Penguin paperbacksThe possibly apocryphal story of the birth of Penguin paperback books begins in 1935 in a train station where the publishing house's founder, Allen Lane, couldn't find anything good to read in the shops. Supposedly, he flashed on the idea of making quality novels readily available for the same price of a pack of smokes. Smithsonian has a short history of "How the Paperback Novel Changed Popular Literature":"How the Paperback Novel Changed Popular Literature"
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:45 pm Test Driving Apple's Game Changing iPad - PC Magazine
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:32 pm Alternate cover for Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom Danielle Mathieux, an MFA student, produced an alternate cover for my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom as part of her degree. She's released it under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. I think it's just swell! Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:24 pm Yelp to show reviews it automatically filters (AP)AP - Yelp, seeking to combat allegations that the online reviews site manipulates its users' feedback on local businesses, will now let visitors see the items that had been automatically removed by software meant to catch unreliable content.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:10 pm Wikileaks: More background material on Iraq massacre leak
Update, 9pm PT: The US military has issued a statement on the massacre investigation (6.52MB PDF). An update on that video released earlier today by Wikileaks, which shows US occupying forces shooting and killing civilians—including two Reuters journalists—in Baghdad. Wikileaks has released additional photographs and video that provide more background. These include interviews with survivors of the attack: a widow and her two children (left). And, above, one of the last two photos taken by war photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen before he was shot by American airmen during the 2007 incident. NYT item here. "Lots of people are avoiding talking about the murderous attack on the van and the wounded; and strawmanning camera/RPG confusion as the issue," Wikileaks tweets. The materials released just now address this issue. Video after the jump. Video: New background material from Iraq (YouTube / Sunshine Press)
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:06 pm Millions of Sea Turtles Captured, Killed by FisheriesSix out of seven of the world's marine turtle species are at risk of extinction. Fisheries aren't helping.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:05 pm April 6, 1903: Edgerton Born, Father of High-Speed PhotographyDoc Edgerton's stroboscopic photos are still a source of amazement. "Faster than a speeding bullet" is no exaggeration.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Troll 2's Weird Road to Web InfamyThe gloriously strange and inexplicable cult favorite Troll 2 will finally get its turn on the big screen in the documentary Best Worst Movie.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:00 pm Iraq: Wikileaks video of US military killing journalists
Update: A senior U.S. official is confirming authenticity of this video. See this subsequent Boing Boing post for additional background materials related to the attack. Wikileaks claims to have obtained and decrypted video that shows US occupying forces in an Apache helicopter intentionally firing on a dozen civilians in Baghdad, including journalists working for the Reuters news organization: 22-year-old Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.
The video is accompanied by audio of the pilots' radio dialogue.
Transcript, and related information at Wikileaks site Collateralmurder.com. Video, and an interview with Wikileaks director Julien Assange, embedded after the jump. A footnote: CNN's homepage right now, vs. Al Jazeera's.
No single piece of video has made me more ashamed to be supporting this stupid, morally bankrupt, endless war with my tax dollars. No wonder my government (and others) wants Wikileaks shut down.
Al-Jazeera interview with Wikileaks director Julien Assange, below.
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 9:48 pm What’s the secret message on the USB drive?
The message is contained in an audio file and text document, and have very little actual information. The person in the audio file reads out the following letters: MOD ZZZ JNQRYD3FRP The text document contains the following words (tags?):
What does it all mean? Well, I’m not good with cryptography, but maybe you are. Of course you could cheat and just highlight the area at the bottom with your mouse to see the solution, but I’m thinking you might enjoy a challenge. Joystiq cracked it, the code translates to http://gknova6.com and looks to be a upcoming game from Bethesda Softworks. The gknova6 site is interesting in an of itself, and worth looking at. [via IGN UK]
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Apr 2010 | 9:30 pm Apple To Announce iPhone OS 'Future' - eWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 8:51 pm After Discovery's Launch, What's Left For the Shuttle?coondoggie writes "NASA space shuttle Discovery rocketed into orbit this morning and, despite some communications problems, is slated to dock with the International Space Station in the wee hours of Wednesday, April 7. After this mission NASA has only three shuttles scheduled to launch, though speculation persists that the program may be extended. NetworkWorld has a roundup of what the last Shuttle missions consist of and what happens next."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Apr 2010 | 8:09 pm How can we make MobileCrunch better for you?
Hello, CrunchGear reader! So here’s the deal. Our sister site, MobileCrunch, is doing well. Like really, really well. February was MC’s biggest month ever, and then March went and made February look silly. That makes the people upstairs happy – and when they’re happy, we’re all happy, because we get to make improvements. So we turn to you, dear reader, and ask: What do you want from MobileCrunch? Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Apr 2010 | 7:55 pm How can we make MobileCrunch better for you?
So here’s the deal. MobileCrunch is doing well. Like really, really well. February was our biggest month ever, and then March went and made February look silly. That makes the people upstairs happy – and when they’re happy, we’re all happy, because we get to make improvements. So we turn to you, dear reader, and ask: What do you want from us?
We think we’ve got a pretty good idea of what you guys like at this point, but we wanted to take a minute to lend an open ear and let you all know that we’re always open to suggestions. Will we go and make all of them a reality right this second? No. Last time we tried to do that someone suggested “Free Cookie Friday” and that just got expensive and overwhelming and I burned myself. But we’ll do our damnedest to take it all to heart. Some of the stuff we’re looking to roll out with haste:
Some stuff I’m curious about:
That’s all. Feel free to answer all, some, or none of these — just spill whatever is on your mind. “Holler at your boy”, or what have you.
Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 7:31 pm Can Amazon, Sony, or Google Catch Apple? [Video]
I found one person who has no plans to buy iPad 1.0: James McQuivey, a VP at Forrester Research. He’s less than impressed with Apple’s latest offering and if he buys an iPad in the future it will be in 2011 or beyond (when the second generation comes out). While the “Kindle Killer” chant is growing louder among iPad reviewers, he still has lots of love for Amazon. Expounding on his blog, he argues that Amazon’s business model is not jeopardized by the iPad because “Amazon is in this for the long term customer relationship. They actually don’t care if you want to buy their device they just care that you want to buy content from them in perpetuity.” Beyond Amazon, he sees Sony and Google as the iPad’s top competitors. In regard to legitimate competitors, he says: “The easy names that come to mind are Dell, HP, Lenovo, and I have to say they’re going to make a bunch of nice tablets but they’ll really all be notebooks or netbooks without keyboards…The people in the best position to make a media centric device, which is what the iPad really is, are going to be Sony. Remember they make Vaios as well as TVs as well as the number two e-reader in the business…And all they have to do is put all those assets together into a single asset and build on some of the assets they have on the gaming side, and on the music side, video side….Now historically they’ve struggled to bring them all together but that doesn’t mean they can’t get it right this time. And the reader business has shown how they can get it right when they really put their mind to it. Beyond them though, Google is a name that you got to keep bandying about here, they have a couple of different operating systems that could be relevant. Not only the Android phone-based OS, but they have the Chrome OS.” I’m less bullish on Amazon, I think the lion’s share of those considering a Kindle purchase, will defect to Apple’s camp— unless Kindle drops the price significantly (McQuivey expects some price drop). But even if Kindle drops the price to say $100 from the $259 baseline, I think many will look at the purchase decision as microwave vs. kitchen. Why spend $100 for the microwave, if you could get a whole kitchen for $499— the economics favor the kitchen (that is if you plan to use all the appliances, like e-mail, internet, multimedia and the app store). I’m a proud Kindle user who loves the e-ink technology but I would give it all up to have a more versatile device. McQuivey says the next Kindle will include many new features and leverage more of Amazon’s offerings (also evidenced by Amazon’s recent acquistion of Touchco and its introduction of a Kindle development kit), but I doubt Amazon will ever create an app store that could rival iPad’s. [image: flickr/d2digital]      
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 7:17 pm Mobile Digital TV: Coming to a Small Screen Near You (PC World)PC World - Despite all the hype about televisions' being turned off in droves in favor of Hulu and YouTube, live TV remains easily the most popular entertainment meÂÂdium (just look at the ratings for American Idol or CSI). Still, in an effort to reach the iPhone generation, the broadcast industry is pushing Mobile Digital Television (Mobile DTV), a technology that lets you watch TV programming while you walk in a park or ride in a car barreling down a highway.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 7:15 pm Predators in Peril -- What's Next for Sharks?The CITES conservation meeting last month failed to protect shark species in danger of overfishing and habitat loss. What's next for the vulnerable predators?Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 7:00 pm iTunes To Integrate Facebook Connect
It certainly adds up. Over the last few weeks, iTunes has been building out its Facebook Page at Facebook.com/iTunes, which now includes polls, featured items, and is being promoted in iTunes itself. And Lala, which was acquired by Apple in December, has extensive experience working with Facebook Connect (they also power Facebook’s song gifting feature). To be clear, you can already share songs on iTunes using both Facebook and Twitter (the feature was introduced last September). It sounds like this integration would make this easier, and there’s obviously the possibly for Apple to leverage Facebook’s social graph in much more interesting ways in the future. Apple has previously worked to add Facebook support to other apps — iPhoto includes an integrated Facebook photo uploader.      
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 6:56 pm Office Productivity in the Cloud with the iPad (PC World)PC World - I pre-ordered the 32Gb Wi-Fi model of the Apple iPad, and I have been immersing myself in what it can, and can't do, for the past couple days since it arrived. I am still trying to test the boundaries of what the iPad can do as a mobile business tool and determine its limitations as a notebook replacement.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 6:45 pm Smokin' Fast Notebook Swaps Graphics Performance for Low PriceThink cheap means slow? Not in the case of Gateway's NV5933u notebook.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 5 Apr 2010 | 6:20 pm Smokin' Fast Notebook Swaps Graphics Performance for Low PriceThink cheap means slow? Not in the case of Gateway's NV5933u notebook.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 6:20 pm Memory Management Technique Speeds Apps By 20%Dotnaught writes "A paper (PDF) to be presented later this month at the IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium in Atlanta describes a new approach to memory management that allows software applications to run up to 20% faster on multicore processors. Yan Solihin, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at NCSU and co-author of the paper, says that using the technique is just a matter of linking to a library in a program that makes heavy use of memory allocation. The technique could be especially valuable for programs that are difficult to parallelize, such as word processors and Web browsers." Informationweek has a few more details from an interview with Solihin.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Apr 2010 | 6:04 pm HP Slate specs leak, get compared the iPad
Looking at this, I think I’ll be buying a Slate. HP looks to have a better processor, more ports, and (more) open operating system. I think it just goes to show that while the first salvo in the tablet wars has definitely been fired, it ain’t over yet. Oh, and $549 for 32GB version? Nice!
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Apr 2010 | 6:00 pm The Tablet Commandments. [Voices]By Nitrozac and Snaggy
Source: All Things Digital | 5 Apr 2010 | 6:00 pm Bots That Botch Your WorkoutHigh-kicking it, squatting, and air-box punching in front of a TV as an overly animated virtual trainer gushes about your rhythm can make you feel like a real schmuck.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 6:00 pm It's urban vegetable foraging season!
Foraging season is on! In Northern California, Miner's lettuce (left) and fennel (right) are perfect for the picking; as the snow thaws on the eastern seaboard and Appalachia, locals are on the lookout for signs of ramps, and Midwesterners are gearing up for morel mushroom festivals. Forest dwellers know there is only a limited window for harvesting fiddlehead ferns and it is near; New Yorkers can sign up for foraging tours in Central and Prospect Park and learn how to make "Five Borough Salad", and Los Angelenos are mapping the city streets for public domain fruit trees. Miner's Lettuce
Dandelion Greens
Fiddlehead Ferns
Fennel
Ramps: Wild Leeks
Ramps favor the shade of forests, and are found along streams. The overall plant is the size of a scallion, but the leaves differ as they are flat and broad and the bright green is tinted with maroon. Crush a stem in your hand --- it should smell like onions; if it does not, don't eat it. Treat the leaves like spring onions--though some people get creative and make ramp kimchee, the wise cook them with bacon for breakfast biscuits. The bulbs are often treated like garlic cloves and used to flavor sauces. Tip: When collecting ramps or other plants with bulbs, always replant the "baby" bulbs that cling to the main root. The Native Americans practiced wild managing in this way, and vastly increased yields of wild edibles over time. Ramps and Wild Leeks. Morels
Fruit Tree Neighborhood Mapping Projects Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 5:50 pm Google Android growth outpacing the industry - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 5:42 pm Don’t buy Lord Of The Rings on Blu-ray (yet)
Sometimes, I really hate movie studios. This is one of those times, because you know as soon as you buy this release of LOTR, the theatrical version, the studio will release the shiny new extended cut version that you’re going to want to buy. It’s called double dipping, and it’s evil. The extras that are coming out tomorrow aren’t bad, but you know they’ve got another version coming out soon. So I say save your $99 (or $59.99 if you look around) and wait for the version with a good transfer, and the director’s cut. Otherwise you’ll be sorry. Probably in about 3 months, I suspect.
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Apr 2010 | 5:30 pm "Free" credit report site disclosures now mandatoryIt pleases me to learn that a new Federal Trade Commission regulation went into effect requiring those sleazy sites like Freecreditreport.com to display this disclosure:THIS NOTICE IS REQUIRED BY LAW. Read more at FTC.GOV. You have the right to a free credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com or 877-322-8228, the ONLY authorized source under federal law.The regulation went into effect on April 2, but Freecreditreport.com doesn't have the disclosure on its home page. It does have a curious notice in the form of a gif (no text), though: So, for starters, Freecreditreport.com isn't even free anymore. But, more than that, this notice doesn't make a lot of sense. The company says it can no longer provide a "free" credit report (thanks to the mean ol' gubmint) and must now charge a dollar. But then it says it will give the dollar to charity. Huh? I have a feeling something else is going on here. I'm only guessing, but I suspect the real reason they charge a dollar is to make sure the credit card number it asks for (before giving you your report) is valid. (Freecreditreport.com uses the card number to charge you $14.95 a month for its lame "Triple Advantage" program). It could be that some people had been signing up using phony credit card numbers that they generated from a site like this. These numbers will pass a local pre-validation check, but will fail when a merchant actually tries to process a charge against the card number. So now the company is charging a dollar to make sure the card is valid. Do you have a better theory? I'm all ears. UPDATE: In the comments, Thalia makes the point that by charging $1, Freecreditreport.com can avoid FTC's new disclosure regulation for "free" credit reports. This is a much better theory than mine. Note: I post stories about money for credit.com, which offers something called CreditReportCard that actually is free. I wrote about Credit Report Card here. "Free" Credit Report Site Disclosures Now Mandatory
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 5:29 pm Video: 5 Sweet Apps to Break in Your iPad
The iPad hit the floor running with over 3,000 tablet apps available on launch day. Naturally, the iPad App Store is a cluttered mess, just like the iPhone’s. In this episode of the Gadget Lab video podcast, I handpick five iPad apps to get you started with your new life as a media-gorging hedonist. A game I easily became obsessed with was Flight Control HD, a plane-landing simulator that involves drawing paths with your finger to land aircraft. The objective is simple: Land as many planes as you can while carefully avoiding collisions. (Then, brag to your friends about your high score and see if they can beat you.) The game costs $5 (download link). I also highlighted an app called Beautiful Planet HD, in which two journalists traveled the world and compiled their photos and writings into what they call a “reinvention of the travel book.” The app features over 500 beautiful, high-res photos, which can be viewed as a slideshow. I really love this idea of rethinking the idea of the book. The app costs $2 for a limited time (download link). Third, I covered the Marvel Comics app, which enables you to download and view comic books with an awesome interface. Not only do comic pages look beautiful on the iPad screen; you can also double tap on a single panel to zoom into it and then swipe to the next panel. It’s a lot like viewing an interactive storyboard for a movie, and it’s a fresh new way to read comics. The app is free. Individual comics cost $2 per download, and there are some free comics as well (download link). A quirky app I covered was Air Harp. As its name implies, it’s an app that allows you to play to a virtual harp. There’s an option to display sheet music and lyrics to learn to play the digiharp and, if you’re ballsy enough, sing along. Air Harp costs $2 in the App Store (download link). I wrap up with a very simple app: Weather HD, which enables you to check the weather. Mind you, Apple doesn’t include a weather app on the iPad like it did with the iPhone, so I’m betting a lot of people will be downloading this. The $1 app displays high-quality 3-D animations of different weather conditions to complement a temperature reading. It’s extraneous, but what else would you do with all that screen (download link)? This episode of the Gadget Lab podcast was produced by Annaliza Savage, with camerawork by John Ross and editing by Fernando Cardoso. For more video from Wired.com, go to www.wired.com/video. See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Apr 2010 | 5:24 pm Video: 5 Sweet Apps to Break In Your iPadOur video demonstrates five apps to break in your brand new iPad.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 5 Apr 2010 | 5:24 pm Video: 5 Sweet Apps to Break In Your iPadOur video demonstrates five apps to break in your brand new iPad.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 5:24 pm President Ford Approved Warrantless Domestic Surveillance ... in 1974While the country was embroiled in a national debate over excessive government surveillance in 1974, President Gerald Ford authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conduct warrantless domestic surveillance, according to a newly declassified memo.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 5:15 pm Ubuntu One Gets iPhone App For Contact Synconeone writes "Canonical is bringing its Ubuntu One cloud service (which we discussed last month) to handheld devices with a new mobile contact synchronization feature that is powered by Funambol. Canonical's Ubuntu One application for the iPhone is now available from the iTunes Music Store. Android and other mobile operating systems will be supported with Funambol's standard client application. The mobile sync feature is currently in the beta testing stage but will be generally available to Ubuntu One subscribers when Ubuntu 10.04 is released later this month. Canonical says that it is boosting its Ubuntu One server infrastructure in order to support what it anticipates will be record loads."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Apr 2010 | 5:12 pm Apple's iPad debuts strongly, but key tests remain (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:50 pm Brightcove Completes New Financing Round [Voices]By Jessica E. Vascellaro, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal Brightcove Inc., already a well-funded player in online-video management, raised what could be its final financing from private investors, as money continues to pour into companies that provide services to distribute Internet video. The Cambridge, Mass., company received $12 million in new funding and expects to go public as soon as next year. It hopes the funds will consolidate its lead among firms that help companies post and manage videos to their own and others’ sites. Competition is heating up. Last week Google Inc. (GOOG) purchased Brightcove rival Episodic Inc. for an undisclosed sum. ThePlatform, owned by Comcast Corp. (CMCS), is targeting large media companies, and Ooyala Inc., a Silicon Valley startup that has raised $20 million, also is going head-to-head with Brightcove, landing customers including Warner Bros. and General Mills Inc. (GIS). Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:47 pm Apple to preview new iPhone software (Reuters)Reuters - Apple Inc is set to host an event on Thursday to show off the newest operating system software for the iPhone, as the company prepares for a widely expected launch of its next-generation smartphone later this year.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:46 pm Cellulosic Ethanol Dealt a BlowNot being one to put all my eggs in one alternative fuel basket, I've long been tracking progress in cellulosic ethanol development--the kind of biofuel made from tough, inedible plant parts including agricultural waste. But a new study out of ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:37 pm AT&T Executive Cindy Brinkley Named 2010 'Woman of Influence' by Webster University School of Business & TechnologyST.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:34 pm Colleges Dream of Paperless, iPad-centric Education
Three universities are getting pumped to hand out free iPads to students and faculty with hopes that Apple’s tablet will revolutionize education. Seton Hill University, George Fox University and Abilene Christian University each pre-ordered bundles of iPads — sight unseen — with plans to experiment with how the tablet could change classroom learning. In interviews with Wired.com just prior to the iPad’s launch last week, officials from each university saw the iPad as having potential to render printed textbooks obsolete. “Those big, heavy textbooks that kids go around with in their backpacks are going to be a thing of the past,” said Mary Ann Gawelek, vice president of academic affairs at Seton Hill, which is giving iPads to its 2,100 students and 300 faculty members beginning this fall. “We think it’s leading to something that’s going to provide a better learning environment for all of our students. We’re hoping that faculty will be able to use more of a variety of textbooks because textbooks will be a little bit less expensive.” One hitch in the universities’ plans is that Apple has not inked deals with any textbook publishers to bring their offerings to the iPad’s iBooks store. So far Apple and publishers have only formed partnerships around e-books for fiction and nonfiction titles, like those available for the Kindle. For textbooks, students can currently access about 10,000 e-textbooks through a third-party company called CourseSmart, which includes titles from the five biggest textbook publishers. CourseSmart is a subscription-based service that charges a fee for students to access e-textbooks of their choice for a limited time. The company has already announced an iPad app (demonstrated below).
The iPad may succeed where Amazon’s Kindle DX failed. Amazon released its 9.7-inch Kindle DX e-book reader in 2009, which was aimed squarely at students and the textbook market. Not only did Amazon not penetrate the e-textbook market; it also failed to impress students with Kindle DX pilot programs launched at a handful of universities. The majority of the 50 students who were part of the pilot program at Princeton said they were not pleased with the Kindle’s slow performance and limited feature set, according to the campus’ newspaper, The Daily Princetonian. “Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages — not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs,” Aaron Horvath, a senior at Princeton, told the school paper last year. “All these things have been lost, and if not lost they’re too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the ‘features’ have been rendered useless.” The iPad has far greater potential to succeed as an educational device than Amazon’s Kindle DX, said Sarah Rotman, a Forrester analyst. Where the Kindle is sluggish, monochrome and limited in interactivity features, the iPad is fast, sports a colorful touchscreen and supports enough apps to cater to a broad audience of students, she said. “The Kindle DX is essentially just a big Kindle with not much of the functionality that students need,” Rotman said. “It’s not color, it’s not touch and it doesn’t have faithful pagination, which is a really big deal for students.” Seton Hill, George Fox and Abilene said that in addition to giving students iPads, they would train teachers to integrate mobile web software and iPad apps into their curricula. Both George Fox and Abilene have already experimented with programs in which they gave students and teachers free iPhones and iPod Touch devices. George Fox’s iPod Touch program wasn’t the greatest success, because it turned out that the iPod Touch wasn’t the primary device students were bringing to the classroom. However, George Fox believes the iPad’s bigger screen will change that. “We think the iPad will become the device students carry with them everywhere, and the laptop will become the base station in their dorm room,” said Greg Smith, chief information officer of George Fox University. “The iPad becomes the mobile learning device.” Wired.com last year reported on the results of Abilene’s iPhone program, in which 2,100 students were equipped with free iPhones. Abilene professors and students said mobile software was improving classroom participation. Web apps enabled students to turn in homework, look up campus maps, watch lecture podcasts and check class schedules and grades. Bill Rankin, a professor of medieval studies at Abilene, called the iPhone program the “TiVoing of education,” because the iPhone was giving students the information they need, when they want it and wherever they want it. After the success of the pilot program, the iPhone has now become a regular part of Abilene’s course structure. Rankin views the iPad as the potential sequel to Abilene’s iPhone program. The university has ordered 50 iPads to kick off an iPad pilot program, which Rankin believes will focus on the future of publishing. “This is really about people re-imagining what books look like — re-imagining something that hasn’t really been re-imagined in about 550 years,” Rankin said. Already, Abilene is getting started with that idea. Abilene’s campus newspaper, The Optimist, has re-purposed its website and newspaper into an iPad app (below) to launch in the App Store soon. “We want the students to start thinking about, what’s the best way to present information on the iPad?” said Kenneth Pybus, an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication, who serves as adviser for The Optimist. “We’re challenging them to design features that would take full advantage of photos and texts and HTML5. There’s an academic component to that — forcing students to think differently about how information is distributed and presented to readers.”
See Also:
Photo: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:28 pm Colleges Dream of Paperless, iPad-centric EducationThree colleges are planning programs in which students and faculty will receive free iPads. They dream of a future where the printed textbook is dead.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:28 pm Colleges Dream of Paperless, iPad-centric EducationThree colleges are planning programs in which students and faculty will receive free iPads. They dream of a future where the printed textbook is dead.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:28 pm Google Shipping All I/O Attendees A Free Droid Or Nexus One Before The Conference
The logic behind the move? I/O is going to be heavy on Android content, so Google wants to make sure everyone in attendance is set up with a working phone, without having to deal with the logistics of handing them out at the conference. Getting them shipped ahead of time will also give developers a chance to familiarize themselves with Android, if they haven’t used it already. Google is sending out Verizon Droids and Nexus Ones to developers based on the location they entered when they first signed up for the conference (and no, according to the FAQ, you can’t request to get a different model). Here’s the Email Google is sending out:
Thanks to Carlos Cardona for the tip.      
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:27 pm Game CEO Sees "Gamification" of Work and MilitaryAn anonymous reader writes "The CEO of Unity discusses 'gamification' — applying game design and technology to real-world applications beyond 'gamespace.' The military is using game design theory for some training programs — not just 'the 3-D, realistic, virtual world experiences, but also the built-in use of frustration and reward.' (And similar training packages were adopted by Unilever, the giant corporation which owns Ben & Jerry's ice cream.) Medical professionals have licensed a 'Google Earth for the human body,' and game design is also being used to build tax software. ('It has to be the most boring field, but I mean that's the point. You can make it slightly challenging and give people little reasons to play these tax tools — beyond, you know, not going to prison!') While some companies conduct team-building exercises using Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, others use game technology to standardize their in-house employee training programs. The interviewer adds, 'I know I'd feel better about job training if it felt more like killing zombies.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:22 pm Pro Home Manager Releases Software Update to Pro Home Manager Personal Edition with Improved Email FacilityPRO HOME MANAGER-Personal Edition(TM) version 4.1.1.12053 that includes an upgraded email facility. PRO HOME MANAGER-Personal Edition can send messages directly or through another installed email program like Microsoft® Outlook® or Thunderbird®. The new PRO HOME MANAGER-Personal Edition email facility has stronger delivery features and improved troubleshooting reporting. Users of PRO HOME MANAGER-Personal EditionSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:17 pm Why Is Time Charging $5 for Its iPad App? [MediaMemo]
Example A: Time Magazine, which is asking $4.99 a week for its app–the same price you’d pay if you bought the paper edition at a newsstand. The electronic version of the weekly does contain some bonus features, like extra photos and video clips. And some iPad users seem to be okay with it: As I type this, the app is ranked No. 16 on the iTunes “top paid” list. But to hear the digerati tell it, Time Inc. is crazy to ask users to pony up full price for a digital good that’s available for free on the Web–even for Apple’s (AAPL) iPad browser. What are the people at Time Warner’s (TWX) magazine unit thinking? I asked them and got this response:
Two notes:
Source: All Things Digital | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:16 pm Obama the Muslim Antichrist? Survey says...A recent poll by Harris interactivefound that 14 percent of Americans suspect that President Barack Obama may be the Antichrist. Nearly a quarter of Republicans, and 16 percent of Democrats, responded this way. Forty percent said they think Obama is ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:14 pm Browser Exploit Brings Jailbreak to the iPad (PC World)PC World - The iPad survived a good, long day before hackers were able to break into it and gain root access over the weekend. The hack was engineered by a group credited with the iPhone "Spirit" jailbreak, according to MacNN.com. The hack uses an exploit in Safari to let you get root access on the device.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:11 pm Tiger Woods returns to golf
On the day that an American consulate in Pakistan is attacked and that Wikileaks posted video of soldiers laughing while they kill civilians in Iraq, the major U.S. news networks have more important things to cover. Tiger Woods has returned to golf.
Update: Fox is first among the major networks to lead with the story. MSNBC also has a front-door item on the Iraq killings--and CBS on Pakistan -- but neither have dislodged Tiger.
Curiously, the search term 'wikileaks' doesn't work at MSNBC's search[reddit], even though other similar terms work fine and there should be many results from MSNBC's frequent coverage of the whistle-blowing site. In fact, a quick check suggests that Bing isn't indexing 'wikileaks' at MSNBC's site at all, but is doing so for other news providers.
Bing itself lets you do that search just fine, so long as you don't restrict it to site:msnbc.com. Compare to the same query at Bing restricted to Fox. The kicker: if you misspell wikileaks in MSNBC's search box, it returns error-corrected results.
Surely it can't be censorshop, given that MSNBC's own Rachel Maddow posted the video on her official blog earlier today and is following the story closely! Source: Boing Boing | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:03 pm Windows 7 market share growing
With the popularity of Windows 7, there’s been a noticeable decline in Vista’s marketshare. It’s even impacting Windows XP, with the most popular OS slipping down gradually into oblivion. Windows 7 is expected to surpass Vista sometime in June though, with the much hated OS getting replaced by the new kid. Oh, and where does OS X come in? A gradually increasing 5.3%. [via Computerworld]
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:00 pm Manpower Inc. Announces Completion of Acquisition of COMSYS IT Partners, Inc.MILWAUKEE, April 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN) announced today that it has successfully completed its acquisition of COMSYS IT Partners, Inc., through the merger of a wholly owned subsidiary of Manpower into COMSYS.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 4:00 pm THE DVD SHELF: Sondheim on DVD, Plus "Mad Men" Season Three and "Make Way for Tomorrow" (Playbill)Playbill - March was Stephen Sondheim month in our "On the Record" column, making it only natural to turn the attention of "The DVD Shelf" to Sondheim as well.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:57 pm Robot Skeleton Is DIY Sidekick for Late-Show HostMythBusters tinkerer Grant Imahara goes for a bare-bones look when asked to create a foil for the host of The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson. Photos and original planning sketches offer a peek at the down-and-dirty process.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:56 pm Shortened links may not be as malicious as thought (AP)AP - Link-shortening services such as TinyURL seem ideal for criminals because they can disguise the names of malicious sites. Yet on Twitter — one of the most popular places for them — they may not be nearly as malicious as many industry experts fear, according to new security research.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:55 pm A Re-Birth for Enterprise Software? [Video]
I talked with Andreessen briefly afterwards about his comment, asking if he meant software-as-a-service specifically and whether he meant niche products or core software for running big businesses. His answer was ‘all of the above’, if it’s the right company — he thinks it’s time for an industry reset. Oracle’s – and to a far lesser degree SAP’s – shopping sprees of the past few years have cleaned out most of the late 1990s enterprise software brush and most big businesses rely on one or both of the big vendors, with no best-of-breed competitors mixed in and very little in the way of new products and real innovation. Corporate America’s rush to get with the modern times in the 1990s lead to a surge in enterprise software buying and several multi-billion dollar companies – Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft, BEA Systems et al. But growth slowed once most corporations had those systems, and consolidation set in. Meanwhile, there haven’t been many challengers coming out of the Valley. Thousands of software-as-a-service and open source companies were started over the last decade to upend the category with cheaper, more flexible pay-as-you-go offerings that didn’t involve the multi-million-dollar installation costs of hardware and customization. These companies were cheaper for venture capitalists to build and could get to millions in revenue quickly, but building a big company has been all but impossible: Salesforce.com still is one of the only billion dollar annual revenue businesses among the entire crop. And since software has long been the most dominant category of venture capital investment and returns, that’s weighed heavily on the asset class. If Andreessen is right and corporate America is ready for a computing restart, the Valley could be on the cusp of better times indeed. Unlike new media and Web 2.0 companies, enterprise software has a great business model: Companies pay millions for the software. But with Wall Street obsessed with cutting capital expenditures and boosting margins the onus will be on the startups to prove they have a next generation product worthy of the pain of a corporate upgrade. Here’s the video… (transcript below) Mr. ARRINGTON: What investments do you have coming up that you haven’t announced? Mr. HORNIK: Right, what are those? Mr. ANDREESSEN: Oh, for example, we are very, very interested and active right now in the enterprise software and a very large number of professional investors think enterprise is dead and, you know, we just think that is absolutely not the case. Mr. ARRINGTON: It certainly isn’t as fun as FourSquare. Mr. ANDREESSEN: Well – so there are some incredibly high quality entrepreneurs, we just – it’s not been announced – but we just backed an incredibly high quality entrepreneur. With a great track record… Mr. HORNIK: Someone who is awesome. Mr. CONWAY: Can we co-invest? Mr. ANDREESSEN: He’s building a fantastic – he’s building what’s going to be a great – he’s going into a huge market, you know, going up against incumbents, you know, all the incumbents in the space have been bought by the likes of Oracle and… he’s going up against, you know, incumbents that are not going to make the shift to the next generation nearly as aggressively as he is and there’s all kinds of market demand for this and numerous companies. But none of us are ever going to use the product – it’s not that kind of product. Mr. HORNIK: Well, this is the thing – right, actually, one of my most interesting companies right now is this company Splunk, which is a search engine for your data center. Does anyone have any idea what Splunk is? No, but on the other hand, it’s pretty exciting.      
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:54 pm Friday News Feedbag Poll for 4/2/2010If this is your first exposure to the Friday News Feedbag...we're glad to have you in the club. Welcome to Feedbag Nation, which stems from our weekly science news podcast that you can subscribe to here on iTunes and chat ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:50 pm Microsoft Announces End of the Line For Itanium SupportWrongSizeGlass writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Microsoft has announced on its Windows Server blog the end of its support for Itanium. 'Windows Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2008 R2, and Visual Studio 2010 will represent the last versions to support Intel's Itanium architecture.' Does this mean the end of Itanium? Will it be missed, or was it destined to be another DEC Alpha waiting for its last sunset?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:37 pm Facebook’s iPad Impostor ‘Facebook Ultimate’ Removed From The App Store (Updated)
Facebook Ultimate certainly had a good run. As All Facebook pointed out yesterday, the $2.99 application rose to become the #7 top paid app on the App Store. The app received many poor reviews from upset users, plenty of which warned others that this was not the app they were looking for, but that apparently didn’t stop people from downloading it. So Facebook decided to take action, citing trademark infringement. We reached out to Facebook about the application’s removal (which apparently happened within the last few hours), and they gave us this statement:
It’s a logical move on Facebook’s part, but I’m surprised this was even allowed to happen in the first place — it should have been obvious to both Facebook and Apple that many users would be looking for a (still non-existant) Facebook iPad app. Update: We’ve been in touch with the developer of Facebook Ultimate, who sent us her side of the story. In short, she says that she submitted her iPhone app months ago, ported it over to the iPad after some positive feedback, and wasn’t out to fool anyone with the new app (she also told me she had no idea Faceook would not release an official app of their own):
     
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:32 pm Towel-Folding Robot Could Fix Laundry WoesFolding clothes is the worst part of doing laundry. But if you can be patient enough, a small robot might be able to do the job for you. A team of researchers from University of California Berkeley have created a mechanical marvel that can pick up a towel from a pile of laundry, fold it (with an inhuman level of concentration) and stack it. The robot is an attempt to demonstrate the machine’s ability to perceive and manipulate “deformable objects,” say the researchers. Most robots today work in places where they can perform tasks that are precise and repetitive. And these work environments are very carefully structured and controlled, say doctoral student Jeremy Maitin-Shepard and Assistant Professor Pieter Abbeel, of Berkeley’s department of electrical engineering and computer sciences. The towel-folding robot hopes to show that robots can work in unstructured places and with objects that are not rigid. The towel-folding robot has been built using Willow Garage’s PR2 robot and has four cameras. Here’s how the robot breaks down the towel-folding process. Using its arms, the robot picks up the towel and flips it around slowly in the air. The machine’s high-resolution cameras then scan the towel to estimate its shape. Once the robot finds two adjacent corners, it begins the folding process and lays its on a flat surface to complete it. The best part is that the robot actually smooths the towel after every fold. Creating a machine that can all do that is relatively simple from a robotics point view, says the researchers. The trick lies is in the robot’s ability to pick up a towel from a pile of clothes. Current computer-vision techniques were primarily developed for rigid objects and can’t handle variations in three-dimensional shape, appearance and texture that can occur with a towel or a sock, say the researchers. To beat that, the Berkeley team developed a new computer vision-based approach for detecting the key points on the cloth for the robot to grasp. And so far, the robot is working very well. In about 50 trials attempted on previously-unseen towels with variations in appearance, material and size, the robot did a swell job, say the researchers, who will present their report (.pdf) at the the International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2010 in May. Nifty as it sounds, be prepared for a long wait if you want that pile of towels folded. The robot took an average of 1,478 seconds — or nearly 25 minutes — to fold each towel. Now the question is: Can the robot match socks too? See Also:
Video: University of California Berkeley 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:31 pm Video: Sonic 4 footage has a mine cart (a mine cart!)
There’s not too much going on out there that doesn’t begin with “i” and end with “will it save the media“, so here’s some Sonic 4 footage. Very reminiscent of a Donkey Kong Country level…
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:30 pm Tortoise's Beauty Contributing to Its DownfallOne of the world's most beautiful tortoises, Madagascar's radiated tortoise, is on the brink of extinction because illegal pet traders covet the eye-catching reptile, which is also hunted for its meat, according to a report today issued by the Turtle ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:19 pm WSJ: Microsoft to announce Project Pink phones next week
When we received an invite to an April 12th Microsoft event earlier today, we figured it was for the long-rumored Project Pink phones. The fonts and general styling were strikingly similar to the Project Pink materials we’d seen trickle out already, and the “It’s time to share.” message stamped on top fit perfectly with the teen-targeted, Social Network-focused mentality purportedly surrounding the project. But just in case there were any lingering sparks of doubt that the event was going to be about Pink, the Wall Street Journal has just gone and stamped them out, confirming with their own “people familiar with the matter” that April 12th will be all Pink, all the time. You know, unless we’re still too busy talking about iPhone OS 4.0.
Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:06 pm Tween Social Network Everloop Wins Coveted DEMOgod AwardLOS ANGELES, April 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Los Angeles and San Francisco-based start up Everloop, a new C.O.P.P.A.-compliant social networking platform and community designed for tween boys and girls (ages 8-13), won a coveted DEMOgod Award during the recent DEMO 2010 Conference.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:01 pm First impressions of Zune firmware 4.5: Video playback works nicely, Smart DJ less nicely
Great news, everyone! I just upgraded my Zune HD’s firmware to the latest and greatest version, version 4.5, and I’m here to report that everything went smoothly… mostly. I probably shouldn’t have used the word “everything,” then. I can now play Xvid videos just fine, having tested an old SummerSlam 2001 DVD rip that I had in my Zune video folder. (Why I have old WWE DVD rips on my hard drive is a matter for another day.) So no problems whatsoever in that regard. Smart DJ, on the other hand, seems just OK. You touch the little icon and off the Zune goes, trying to find similar artists and genres based on your current artist selection. The thing is, the results are sorta lackluster. Like, I’ll activate Smart DJ when looking at Pearl Jam, and it’ll throw back other songs from the same album, or merely other Pearl Jam songs from different albums. Same thing goes with Jay-Z. I thought the point was new music discovery? Or, even more weird (but in a different way), I’ll activate Smart DJ while looking at Ladytron and it’ll create a playlist including Wu-Tang Clan. What do Ladytron and Wu-Tang have in common? Unless I missed some sort of experimental phase of the Wu-Tang Clan, I’m gonna say they don’t have very much in common! It’s not always like that—I’ll pick Yeah Yeah Yeahs and it’ll make a playlist including Phoenix. That at least makes sense—it’s all indie rock nonsense. Presumably Smart DJ improves the more music you have on your Zune HD, and since I only have a 16GB version… Good thing there’s a 64GB version! So, video playback works splendidly, but Smart DJ is a little iffy. The feature I’d like to see most, especially if Microsoft is pushing the Zune HD as a “higher end” media player? FLAC playback. Surely if the Zune HD can handle Xvid playback it can handle FLAC playback, right? Update I probably should have mentioned that I don’t have Zune Pass. I would imagine Smart DJ would work quite a bit better if it’s able to tap into the Zune Marketplace rather than merely a local library. I can only test what I have, so if anyone out there in Radio Land has Zune Pass be sure to let us know how you find Smart DJ. To be honest, I primarily use my Zune HD to listen to podcasts on the train, so Smart DJ is wasted on people like me. Still, it’s filled to the brim with music (I only keep the most recent podcast on there at all time, out of say five podcasts) and that’s how it worked for me. Your results may vary, etc.
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Apr 2010 | 3:00 pm MySpace Planning To Roll Out Facebook Connect ASAP (Or Not)
So touchy, in fact, that my source tells me that by simply breaking the news early the whole rollout might be ditched or delayed. A key part of the launch is apparently a serious amount of message massaging by MySpace PR on what this means for MySpace. Earlier this year the MySpace UK team added Facebook Connect features to a fan video without, apparently, the knowledge of upper management at MySpace. MySpace also quietly (silently actually) rolled out sharing on Facebook for MySpace videos recently. This new Facebook Connect rollout is being done very quietly as well, we’ve heard. Some very senior MySpace execs seem to have no idea it’s happening. So what does all this mean? In the next week or two we’ll see at least a limited rollout of Facebook Connect on MySpace. Or, we won’t. Ah, the joys of having co-presidents to take your company to the next level.      
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:56 pm Blu-ray Proposes Incompatible BD-XL and IH-BD Formatsadeelarshad82 writes "The Blu-ray Disc Association announced upcoming specifications for high-capacity write-once and rewritable discs. The BDA proposed two new formats, BDXL, the name given to new 100GB and 128GB discs; and IH-BD, a so-called 'Intra-Hybrid' disc that will incorporate both read-only and rewritable layers. Specifications for both disc types will be published during the upcoming months. Both formats will be incompatible with existing hardware; however, new players designed to take advantage of the new formats will be able to play back existing Blu-ray discs, which are available in both 25 and 50GB capacity points."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:55 pm Clicker Helps You Find iPad-Friendly Videos
Clicker, which made its debut at TechCrunch50 last fall, makes it easy to search through the vast amounts of video content available online. Clicker’s index includes over 600,000 full length TV episodes spanning 10,000 shows. The service also allows users to search through premium content including Netflix’s Instant Streaming movies and Amazon Video on Demand (though you have to pay to watch them). Additionally, the site indexes music videos, and has started teaming up with schools to index their lectures and other original content. Clicker doesn’t actually host any of this content — instead, it provides deep links that point you directly to whichever episode you want to watch. So when iPad users access Clicker’s site on their device, they will be redirected to a specially formatted version of Clicker that has indexed all of the sites and videos on the web that are able to be viewed on the iPad. Clicker’s iPad-friendly site will index HTML5, Quicktime, and H.264 formatted videos. For now, programs available for download via the iTunes store aren’t in the Clicker catalog but should be added within the next few weeks. And as more content becomes available on the iPad, Clicker’s universal search technology will index it and make it available for the iPad-specific site. At launch, the site will only be able to be accessed by iPad devices. In the blog post announcing the new site, Clicker says they will be launching a fill-fledged iPad app fairly soon. The site will surely be useful for iPad users to find the TV content on the web that works for the device. Of course, iPad users can also access TV content from a host of iPad apps from TV networks and others that are available for download. Clicker, which officially launched to the public in November, just raised an $11 million Series B funding round led by JAFCO Ventures, with existing investors Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures also participating.      
Source: TechCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:38 pm Remember the Linux wristwatch?
Is it useful? Hardly! Is it cool? Oh yes! Read the whole IBM’s Linux Wristwatch blast from the past at FreeOS.com.
Source: CrunchGear | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:30 pm Overstock.com Regains Compliance with NASDAQ Listing RulesSALT LAKE CITY, April 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Overstock.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: OSTK) today announced that it has received notice from the NASDAQ Stock Market ("NASDAQ") that the company is in compliance with the periodic filing requirement and this matter has been closed.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:30 pm Rumor: Looks like AT&T might be getting the Samsung Galaxy S, or something just like it
Samsung has been teasing the gadget-loving world ever since the announcement of the Galaxy S back at CTIA. “It’s Android-powered!” they’d say. “4.0-inch Super AMOLED screen!” they’d say. “Oh, you want to know what carrier its going to? Oh. Well, that’s a bummer.” they’d say. Unless we’re looking too hard into these freshly released Bluetooth Certification papers, it looks like one of the carriers getting the Galaxy S — or at least a very Galaxy S-esque phone — will be AT&T. Check out the Bluetooth Certification sheet for the Galaxy S, and now check out this one for the Samsung SGH-I987. Notice any similarities? Both are running TouchWiz 3.0 on top of Android, and both have the same 4.0″ AMOLED display. The only difference we can see at this point (outside of a few missing Bluetooth profiles) is the model number: the Samsung Galaxy S is the GT-I9000, while this new mystery phone is the SGH-I897. And as for why we’re assuming this one’s heading for AT&T: it’s all in the model number. As far back as we can remember, Samsung models beginning with SGH and ending with 7 (like the Propel [SGH-A767], Propel Pro [SGH-i627], Mythic [SGH-a897], Impression [SGH-A877], Eternity [SGH-A867]) have all gone to AT&T. Couple that in with the fact that it’s a GSM handset with EDGE bands (3G radio bands weren’t disclosed) that play friendly with AT&T, and it’s all just coming together too perfectly. Who knows: maybe it’s the Galaxy S Pro?
Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:29 pm Offshore Wind Turbines Could Power Atlantic SeaboardA chain of 11 offshore wind power generators could provide all the power needed from Massachusetts to North Carolina, according to a new study.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:20 pm Compliance Is Wasted Money, Study FindsTrailrunner7 writes "Enterprises are spending huge amounts of money on compliance programs related to PCI-DSS, HIPAA and other regulations, but those funds may be misdirected in light of the priorities of most information security programs, a new study has found. A paper by Forrester Research, commissioned by Microsoft and RSA, the security division of EMC, found that even though corporate intellectual property comprises 62 percent of a given company's data assets, most of the focus of their security programs is on compliance with various regulations. The study found that enterprise security managers know what their companies' true data assets are, but find that their security programs are driven mainly by compliance, rather than protection (PDF)."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:12 pm Media Invited to 'All About the Cloud,' World's Largest On-Demand EventOpSource and SIIA to Host Largest Forum for Cloud Solutions May 10-12 SANTA CLARA, Calif.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:04 pm 95-Million-Year-Old Insects Found in African Amber Surprise ScientistsA wingless ant discovered in 95-million-year-old amber from Africa is challenging scientists' understanding of the evolutionary history of insects and plants.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 2:00 pm Forest Epidemic An Unprecedented Phenomenon, Still Getting WorseImage 1: New research has found that older Douglas-fir trees in Oregon are just as susceptible to Swiss needle cast as younger ones, suffering the same needle loss and in some cases almost stop growing. (Photo courtesy of Oregon State University) Image 2: Young trees drop their needles, turn yellow and grow much more slowly when infected by the fungus Swiss needle cast, an epidemic in Oregon coastal forests. (Photo courtesy of Oregon State University)Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:52 pm Ntera Prints a Display on Almost Any Surface
Displays don’t always have to live encased in glass houses. Instead, a color screen can now be printed on almost any material — plastic, ceramic, paper or textiles — through a process similar to how ink is printed on paper, says Irish startup Ntera. The new displays, called NanoChromics, use specially synthesized molecules that can produce images with a resolution equivalent to that of a conventional inkjet printer. The difference is that NanoChromics displays are screens that can be changed electronically, like an LCD, instead of being static images. “The molecules change color when they receive a charge so it can go from a colorless state to a colored state,” says Chris Giacoponello, vice president at Ntera. “We can manipulate that by putting it on almost any surface.” Ntera’s displays can be viewed from virtually any angle and under a wide range of lighting conditions, says the company. They also don’t consume much power and can be “tricked” into being bistable, which means they’ll retain their image even when the power is turned off, according to Ntera. On the downside, they are currently able to show only one color: blue. Printed electronics is a emerging field that looks to take common printing techniques, such as screen printing, and use them to create electronic and optical components. For instance, printed electronics, which are produced using roll-to-roll manufacturing similar to how newspapers are printed, can be more efficient than techniques that involve depositing materials on a substrate. The idea is to create electronics that can be used in applications where low cost is more important than high performance, thus opening up new ways of interacting with digital information. Research firm IDTechEx estimates that printed electronics will be 35 percent of a $1.9 billion market for thin-film electronics this year. Ntera’s displays can be mass produced and printed on paper, greeting cards and tickets, among other things, says the company. Remember Esquire magazine’s E Ink cover? Ntera says its display can be printed directly on the paper and it can cost a tenth of the $10 price tag that the magazine carried. “We can get a level of cost effectiveness that other displays can’t,” says Giacoponello. “If you put an E Ink display on a piece of plastic, you have to create a display module to include that display feature on the plastic. We can print directly on the plastic.” Ntera’s displays are based on a technology called electrochromism. It is a phenomenon where some materials can change color when a burst of charge is applied. To construct the display, an array is made of electrodes created from a metal oxide semiconductor. The electrodes are mounted on a flexible film, to which electrochromic molecules are attached. A charge applied through the semiconducting particles causes the molecules at the surface to be charged and thus change color. The film is many particles thick so the change in color, which would otherwise be barely detectable, becomes dramatic, says Ntera. Adding an opaque white layer behind the electrochromic layer as background also makes the display seem more vivid. The displays can be manufactured on a number of flexible substrates using traditional printing techniques such as inkjet and screen printing, says Ntera. Unlike LCDs that require a constant electric charge to maintain the image, an NCD image can be bistable to a certain extent — that means it can be active even if the power is lost. “It’s not 100 percent bistable, but more like a leaky capacitor,” says Giacoponello. “The display slowly reverses and we can engineer the time so the image can stay from minutes to hours.” Ntera says its display has extremely low power requirements: as low as 0.5 volts for activation, and color changes in the displays are triggered at voltages below 1 volt DC. The company plans to release color molecules in red and orange soon, which should help expand the range of colors beyond the blue hue it can currently produce. Still, the lack of full color can be limiting, agrees Giacoponello. “If a customer comes to me and says I have a logo in 10-tone color 352 I can’t do that,” he says. “We are limited by what molecules we can synthesize.” There’s also another problem, says Carl Taussig, director of the information surfaces lab at HP. It’s difficult to produce high-grade displays on paper and textiles, he says. “These are called low-grade substrates,” says Taussig. “Because of their rough nature it is difficult to make something with a reasonable resolution.” Plastics, however, are an attractive option and they could open the door for a new generation of display technology, he says. Ntera says that despite the limited color palette its customers are planning to put the displays into retail store cards, event tickets, transportation passes and even in magazines. Photo: Ntera display 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:46 pm Ntera Prints a Display on Almost Any SurfaceAn Irish startup says its can print a display on almost any material through a process similar to printing ink on paper.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:46 pm Steve Jobs appears at Palo Alto Apple store for iPad launch - Apple Insider
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:45 pm BLT Restaurant Group Launches Contest to Name Its New Burger RestaurantsNEW YORK, April 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Starting today, BLT Restaurant Group begins its national online "Name Game" contest.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:45 pm Ancient Amber Deposit Reveals New Insects And BacteriaA 95-million-year-old amber deposit uncovered in Ethiopia, the first major discovery of its kind from the African continent, is helping scientists reconstruct an ancient tropical forest and gain new insights into an ecosystem once shared by dinosaurs.The scientific team—an international group of 20 researchers including Paul Nascimbene of the American Museum of Natural History’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology—describes the findings, which include new fungus, insects, spiders, and even bacteria from the Cretaceous Period, in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:45 pm Proposed Wind Power Grid Will Make Wind Power More ReliableLinking power generators along U.S. East Coast could compensate for natural wind fluctuation, provide more consistent electricity productionThe energy needs of the entire human population could potentially be met by converting wind energy to electricity by means of wind turbines. While offshore wind power resources are abundant, wind turbines are currently unable to provide steady power due to natural fluctuations in wind direction and strength. However, offshore wind power output can be made more consistent by choosing project development locations that take advantage of regional weather patterns and by connecting wind power generators with a shared power line, according to a paper by researchers from the University of Delaware and Stony Brook University that is published in the April 5 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."Making wind-generated electricity more steady will enable wind power to become a much larger fraction of our electric sources," said the paper's lead author Willett Kempton, UD professor of marine policy in UD's College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and director of its Center for Carbon-free Power Integration.The research team — which also included UD alumnus Felipe Pimenta, UD research faculty member Dana Veron, and Brian Colle, associate professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University — demonstrated that thoughtful design of offshore wind power projects can minimize the impacts of local weather on power fluctuations.The researchers analyzed five years of wind observations from 11 monitoring stations along the U.S. East Coast from Florida to Maine. Based on wind speeds at each location, they estimated electrical power output from a hypothetical five-megawatt offshore turbine. After analyzing the patterns of wind energy among the stations along the coast, the team explored the seasonal effects on power output."Our analysis shows that when transmission systems will carry power from renewable sources, such as wind, they should be designed to consider large-scale meteorology, including the prevailing movement of high- and low-pressure systems," said Dr. Kempton.Dr. Colle explained the ideal configuration. "A north-south transmission geometry fits nicely with the storm track that shifts northward or southward along the U.S. East Coast on a weekly or seasonal time scale," he said. "Because then at any one time a high or low pressure system is likely to be producing wind (and thus power) somewhere along the coast."The researchers found that each hypothetical power generation site exhibited the expected ups and downs, but when they simulated a power line connecting them, the overall power output was smoothed so that maximum or minimum output was rare. In the particular five-year period studied, the power output of the simulated grid never stopped completely.No wind turbines are presently located in U.S. waters, although projects have been proposed off the coasts of several Atlantic states. This research could prove useful as project sites are selected and developed.Reducing the severity of wind power fluctuations would allow sufficient time for power suppliers to ramp up or down power production from other energy sources as needed. Solutions that reduce power fluctuations also are important if wind is to displace significant amounts of carbon-emitting energy sources, the researchers said.The study was funded by the Delaware Sea Grant College Program and CAPES, a Brazilian research council.---Image Caption: Researchers analyzed hypothetical power output from five-megawatt offshore turbines similar to the one shown here off the coast of Belgium. Credit: Hans HillewaertSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:38 pm Does Evolution Takes Different Paths With Form And Function?Biologists long have known that both the appearance of organisms and their inner workings are shaped by evolution.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:34 pm Towel Folding Robot Can Manipulate Non-rigid ObjectsMore than just a household convenience, the project is a step forward in the robotic manipulation of non-rigid objectsWho wouldn't want a robot that could make your bed or do the laundry? Well, a team of Berkeley researchers has brought us one important step closer by, for the first time, enabling an autonomous robot to reliably fold piles of previously unseen towels.Robots that can do things like assembling cars have been around for decades.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:25 pm Eating Like A Bird Helps Forests GrowImage Caption: A survey of more than 100 experiments on birds, bats and lizards from four continents showed that small, interguild predators increase plant biomass by consuming herbivores and their insect predators. Credit: Christian ZieglerSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:15 pm Swets & Reprints Desk Form Pilot Partnership in the Americas for Document DeliveryRUNNEMEDE, N.J.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:13 pm Tropical Storm Robyn Nested Away From LandImage 1: NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Tropical Storm Robyn on April 2, 1929 UTC and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument captured an infrared image of the storm's cloud temperatures. The images showed high, cold, thunderstorm cloud tops (purple) as cold as -63 F. Credit: NASA JPL, Ed OlsenImage 2: The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Robyn on Monday, April 5, at 0729 UTC (3:29 a.m. EDT). The white areas on the sides of the image are outside of the "vision" of the AIRS instrument as the satellite passed over the storm from space. Credit: NASA JPL, Ed OlsenSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:12 pm 'Sound Bullets' Could Blast Subs, CancerAn old toy has inspired some new tricks.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:01 pm Power of the Wind: Thinking BiggerWind power is unreliable at small scales. But zoom out -- say, to the entire east coast of the U.S. -- and good breezes are always blowing. The finding could be a revelation for green energy.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 1:00 pm AT&T may have bailed on Tiger, but they still want you to watch the Masters on your phone
This post was originally supposed to be a nice little summary of how AT&T would be bringing the 2010 Masters Golf Tournament to their wireless customers. Then we remembered that AT&T bailed as a sponsor of Tiger Woods, a Masters golfer, after something from his personal life became public knowledge. While we don’t support infidelity, we also don’t support companies knee-jerking over the goings-on in someone’s private life just because the media has decided to obsess over it. Since AT&T is supporting Tiger’s efforts at the Masters as little as possible, we’re supporting AT&T’s efforts at the Masters as little as possible. If you’re interested, here’s the press release.
Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 12:59 pm Radiated Tortoise Under Threat Of ExtinctionIllegal hunting for meat and pet trade is wiping out critically endangered speciesA team of biologists from the Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) reported today that Madagascar's radiated tortoise – considered one of the most beautiful tortoise species – is rapidly nearing extinction due to rampant hunting for its meat and the illegal pet trade.The team predicts that unless drastic conservation measures take place, the species will be driven to extinction within the next 20 years.The team recently returned from field surveys in southern Madagascar's spiny forest, where the once-abundant tortoises occur. They found entire regions devoid of tortoises and spoke with local people who reported that armed bands of poachers had taken away truckloads of tortoises to supply open meat markets in towns such as Beloha and Tsihombe. Poaching camps have been discovered with the remains of thousands of radiated tortoises, and truckloads of tortoise meat have been seized recently."Areas where scores of radiated tortoises could be seen just a few years ago have been poached clean," said James Deutsch, director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Africa Program. "Back then one could hardly fathom that this beautiful tortoise could ever become endangered, but such is the world we live in, and things can – and do – change rapidly.""The rate of hunting of radiated tortoises is similar to the hunting pressure on American bison during the early 19th century, where they were nearly hunted to extinction when they once numbered in the tens of millions," said Brian D. Horne, turtle conservation coordinator for the Wildlife Conservation Society's Species Program.Tortoise populations near urban centers have crashed with poachers moving closer and closer to protected areas; it is simply a matter of time before those areas are targeted too, the biologists predict."Radiated tortoises are truly under siege now as never before, and if we can't draw a line in the sand around protected areas, then we will lose this species" said Rick Hudson, president of the TSA. "I can't think of a tortoise species that has undergone a more rapid rate of decline in modern times, or a more drastic contraction in range, than the radiated tortoise. This is a crisis situation of the highest magnitude."Formerly occupying a vast swath of the southern portion of the island nation of Madagascar – the radiated tortoise was once considered one of the world's most abundant tortoise species, with an estimated population in the millions. It is now ranked as Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List.One of the most troubling trends is that poachers are now entering protected areas (Special Reserves, National Parks, World Heritage Sites) to collect tortoises and the staff there are poorly equipped to patrol and protect populations. The situation is exacerbated by several factors:1. Years of extreme drought that have led to diminished agricultural production and increased poverty, which leads people to tortoise hunting for survival;2. Enforcement action is often days away so that local officials do not have the capacity to stop poachers;3. Severe habitat degradation has made the spiny forest the most endangered forest type in Madagascar. After burning and clearing for agriculture invasive plant species take over and today thick stands of opuntia (prickly pear) and sisal (agave) dominate the landscape;4. Current political instability has resulted in an increased open access to natural resources and illegal pet trade. The radiated tortoise is still able to "make a living" and survive in this degraded habitat. However, the tortoise cannot survive the current threat of wholesale collection for food markets. Community mobilization linked to sustainable habitat protection is needed to save this unique critically endangered species.Dr. John Robinson, WCS's executive vice president for Conservation Science, testified before Congress recommending that freshwater turtles and tortoises receive greater attention under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service-administered Marine Turtle Conservation Fund.The Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo owns many radiated tortoises kept at the Behler Chelonian Conservation Center and other U.S. zoos and about a dozen held at the WCS Bronx Zoo. Many of these are Species Survival Program-recommended animals for breeding. These animals form a significant percentage of the animals in the U.S.---Image 1: The once abundant radiated tortoise has disappeared from wide areas of its native habitat in southern Madagascar due to hunting for food and the illegal pet trade. Credit: Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation SocietyImage 2: A team of biologists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Turtle Survival Alliance have reported that Madagascar's radiated tortoise -- of the world's most beautiful tortoise species -- is being hunted to extinction. Credit: Julie Larsen Maher/Wildlife Conservation SocietySource: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2010 | 12:33 pm Video: Hackers Jailbreak iPadThe iPad has barely seen the light of day, and hackers have already jailbroken it.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 5 Apr 2010 | 12:00 pm Apollo 13 Mission Manual: For the Armchair Astronaut Who Has EverythingOn April 13 in New York City, Bonhams will auction off pages from the Apollo 13 mission manual, with handwritten notes by flight commander Jim Lovell.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 5 Apr 2010 | 11:56 am T-Mobile: Give up your iPhone and we’ll give you $350 off an HD2
It’s 6:30 am. The Alarm app on your iPhone screams to life, the handset vibrating across the table. You grab it before it shuffles off the edge. You stare at the screen. It stares back. “It’s 6:30 AM! Snooze?”, it says through a fake, one-tooth grin. “I hate you, iPhone. I wish you were an HD2.” If this story sounds familiar, your day is about to get so much better.
TmoNews just got their paws on the above intranet message, outlining a plan for “participating” T-Mobile retailers (read: not all of them) to sell some HD2s by handing out a good chunk of cash in exchange for iPhones. Here’s how it works: You take your working, hopefully-in-good-shape iPhone into a T-mobile store. You tell them you’re interested in an HD2, and they’ll tell you how much store credit they’ll give you toward the purchase, ranging from $100 to $350. Easypeezy. Given that the HD2 goes for $199 on a two year contract, you could very easily be walking out of the store with a free handset be it that your iPhone is in good enough shape. If you’re looking to avoid all that contract nonsense, you can also apply that credit towards outright purchasing the $450 unit, bringing the final price as low as $100 bucks. If you’re looking to get rid of your iPhone and an HD2 sounds right, this seems like a decent way to go about it. If you’re not looking to get rid of your iPhone — well, then this is a terrible idea for you.
Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 11:48 am BlackBerry Tour2 and BlackBerry 8230 show up in Sprint’s systems, bring friends
Remember the last time Sprint released a new BlackBerry device? Dinosaurs had just recently stopped roaming the earth, and the only time people saw fire was when they were lucky enough to have lightning strike a nearby tree. Well, it looks like Sprint might soon be getting not one, but two new BlackBerry handsets to bring them up to speed.
The BoyGenius just dug up these inventory order form screenshots showing the BlackBerry 9650 (otherwise known as Tour2) and BlackBerry 8230 (which, as long as RIM is being consistent with their model numbers here, is the BlackBerry Pearl Flip) — neither of which is currently available on Sprint — up for order to retailers. Also making appearances: the Motorola ES400 and the Palm C40, two phones which no one really knows anything about. Some say the ES400 will run WP7; others say Android. We’ll hold off hedging our bets until this thing becomes a bit more concrete.
Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 11:20 am HP Offers Another Peek at its Tablet, Specs Leaked?Updated at 16:00 EST to include additional details about the tablet While Apple’s iPad tablet is already out in stores, PC maker HP is busy trickling out videos every month about its iPad killer in a bid to drum up some buzz for the product. Last month, HP released its first video introducing the HP Slate, a Windows 7 operating system based tablet that will support Adobe’s Flash technology. Now HP’s latest video gives us a few more details. The Slate is likely to have a built-in camera, video-recording capability, USB port and a SD card reader — all features pointedly aimed at the iPad, which lacks all three. The HP Slate will also include access to Skype, an iTunes-like music store, integration with Flickr and the Firefox browser. The Slate will have a full capacitive touchscreen in a design that’s similar to the iPad and familiar gesture such as pinch-to-zoom to navigate. Still no word on pricing or availability of the HP Slate, though it is likely that it will launch this year. Meanwhile, a leak from what is supposed to be an internal HP Slate presentation suggest the Slate will have an 8.9-inch touchscreen, 1.6 GHz Atom processor, Wi-Fi capability, optional 3G access and a pen/digitizer support, says Engadget. The Slate could cost $550 or $600 depending on storage chosen–32 GB or 64 GB. But here’s what looks like will be a huge problem for HP. The leaked specs suggest the HP Slate will have a battery life of about 5 hours, which is half of what Apple promises with the iPad. For a device that’s all about media consumption and to an extent portability, battery life is likely to play a key role in a consumer’s decision on which tablet to buy. See Also:
Video: HP 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Apr 2010 | 11:16 am Apple to Preview iPhone OS 4 This Week
Before all the iPad buzz has even had a chance to fizzle, Apple this morning sent e-mails inviting press to a sneak preview of the next-generation iPhone operating system. The event is scheduled for Thursday, 10 a.m. PT at Apple headquarters. Apple has not officially disclosed any details about its next iPhone OS, but a few rumors suggest it will introduce enhanced multitasking. The current iPhone OS (3.0) only allows a few core apps, such as iPod and Mail, to run in the background while another app is active. The iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad all run the iPhone operating system. Rumors hint that iPhone OS 4 will have a multitasking feature based on Apple’s Exposé, a tool in Mac OS X that enables users to see all open applications in an exploded view and quickly switch between them. We’ll find out whether that’s true soon enough. Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 preview event in March 2009 was rather transparent. During that press conference, Apple demonstrated a new copy-and-paste feature for the iPhone, as well as the ability for apps to communicate with special-purpose accessories. Then at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple announced the release of iPhone OS 3.0 along with new iPhone hardware. In short, if Apple stays consistent, don’t expect to download iPhone OS 4.0 until summer. Yours truly will be attending the event Thursday and providing live blog and news coverage. Stay tuned here at Gadget Lab. See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:42 am Apple Holding Special Event To Preview iPhone OS 4 This Thursday
The event, which obviously comes just after the launch of the iPad, will showcase the new features coming with the latest release of the iPhone/iPad operating system, giving developers time to plan for and integrate the new features into their apps. There have been rumors for months that this new update will include the ability for certain third party apps to run in the background. Apple has been holding these developer preview events since before the App Store launched — there was one in March 2008 where the iPhone SDK was announced. And last March Apple gave a preview of the iPhone 3.0 software update. Historically (by which I mean, the last two years) these updates have been released alongside new iPhones in the summer (the iPhone 3G came out July 11 2008; the 3GS was released June 19 2009).
Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:34 am Four new Samsung Bada handsets make a surprise appearance
Samsung is a strange company. They, like many other companies, fight tooth and nail to keep their products a secret. Then they go and show four unannounced handsets at a developer event — sans any details beyond appearance. Did they just forget these weren’t announced? Are they trying to build up the hype? Either way: it’s four new devices, so we’re happy.
Phonereport got their hands on the slide above, which appears to be showing off four Bada-powered smartphones that will follow the Samsung Wave. To explain a bit: It’s getting cheaper from left to right. The Wave is Samsung’s top end phone, with the other two unnamed beauties going for progressively less. What do you think? Any of them catching your eye? [Via EngadgetMobile]
Source: MobileCrunch | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:24 am Larger Scavengers Get First Dibs At Seafloor BuffetImage Caption: Small marine animals called macrofauna -- snails, worms, clams, and other creatures no bigger than a pencil eraser -- live and feed in the seafloor sediment. Credit: Craig McClainSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2010 | 10:05 am Buzz to reset privacy settings - users back in controlSection: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Web Apps, Websites, Google
The move is a good one, after all confirming privacy settings and educating users on what is public or shared is beneficial to all. Last month, a letter was written to the FTC over Google’s breach in privacy. Requiring all users to confirm their privacy setting should stem any lingering effects. Our Shawn Ingram explains Buzz, “Buzz, at first glance comes off as a bit of a Twitter-clone built into Gmail. It’s a service for sharing short messages, photos and videos with your friends. Of course, unlike Twitter and Facebook, there’s theoretically a way to automatically include everyone as it just takes your friends from Google Contacts. Buzz makes it possible to link to other web services like Picasa, Flickr, Twitter and Google Reader, which looks to be a nice feature. Everything is viewed in the same box, so no going outside of Buzz to watch a video or look at photos, and new comments appear in realtime lie Google Wave.” Can Buzz regather the steam lost over the privacy snafu? Read: [Mashable] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 5 Apr 2010 | 9:59 am Laughing Gas From Thawing Ice Affects Climate ChangeImage Caption: Image Caption: Pictured are lichen and shrub–covered palsas surrounded by a pond resulting from melting permafrost in a bog near the village of Radisson, Canada. Credit: Serge PayetteSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2010 | 9:48 am Taking away the toys: 30 years no computer is too harshSection: Computers, Security, Software / Applications
Certain jobs, such as those at McDonald’s and PETCO require the use of a computer to fill out a job application. The court, a three man panel, his attorney and prosecutor agreed the sentence was too harsh and could prevent the convict from rehabilitation. One could make the argument that both these examples cited might alone prevent rehabilitation based their attraction of young kids, just saying. The stipulation on computer use also included owning a computer. The ruling came in a 15 page document and modified the mans sentence. From the ruling:
Read: [AP]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 5 Apr 2010 | 8:47 am Officials Battling Oil Spill In Great Barrier ReefA Chinese coal carrier that has run aground in northeastern Australia has officials scrambling to prevent a major oil leak from pouring into the Great Barrier Reef.The Shen Neng 1 was moving at full speed when it struck Douglas Shoals in Queensland on Saturday, and according to various reports, it suffered a breach of its fuel tank and has started spilling oil.In a statement released Monday morning, Maritime Safety Queensland (MSQ) noted that the ship has already lost two of the 1,000 tons of oil it is carrying, resulting in a 100-yard slick that is two miles long.Authorities have been concerned that the ship could possibly break apart, but on Monday, two tugboats were able to stabilize the craft, according to Associated Press (AP) reports.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2010 | 8:05 am Mexico, Parts of U.S. Hit By Major QuakeA 7.2 magnitude earthquake rocked Mexico and parts of the Western United States on Sunday, leaving at least two dead and 100 injured according to early media reports.It was reportedly the most powerful quake to strike the region in decades.According to the U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 5 Apr 2010 | 7:45 am Sprint order form reveals upcoming BlackBerry 9650, BlackBerry 8230 and Motorola ES400 releasesSection: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
Read [BGR] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 5 Apr 2010 | 7:39 am Universal Wrist Charger: Not What You Think
The Universal Wrist Charger is not, tragically, a motion-powered generator which tops up its battery from the movements of your wrist. That would make my job way too easy, and would pretty much write its own rather juvenile jokes. Instead, the Universal Wrist Charger is simply a rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack with a mini-USB output and 1,500mAh capacity. The wrist-mounting is merely for convenience, but the simple addition of the wrist strap appears to make this a whole lot better than the usual re-juicer. The use-case that the seller ThinkGeek pushes is that of charging a Nintendo DS as you play, but any handheld device that can be charged with 5.5v will work, from cellphones to cameras to media-players. To this end, the charger comes bundled with nine chargers, from the PSP and the DSi to the iPhone and both Nokia adapters. At $35, it is similarly-priced to other device-specific solutions. That is looks a little like the teleport bracelets from 1970s kitsch-fi Brit series Blake’s 7 doesn’t hurt, either. Universal Wrist Charger [ThinkGeek] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Apr 2010 | 7:32 am U-Lock Tool Turns Kryptonite into Wrench
How neat is this little U-Lock tool? It’s a 15mm wrench – the size of pretty much all axle-nuts – in the form of a sleeve which slides onto the barrel of a Kryptonite lock. The chromed steel tool fits onto Evolution and Gray Kryptonite locks, and the curved section of the lock slots through a hole in the tool to keep it safely in place when you’re bike is unattended, thus avoiding the number-one problem with bike-mounted tools: they’re pretty handy for a thief. The lock comes in at just 100 grams, making it lighter than many wrenches, and of course you don’t need extra space to carry it. You can also use the lock itself as a lever. The tool is designed by the folks at Monkey Likes Shiny, and has been in testing for a year. At $30 retail, it’s certainly more expensive than even a top-brand box-wrench, but then you’re not just paying for utility, you’re paying for convenience and style, along with a healthy dose of clever engineering. There are no retailers yet, but you’ll soon be able to order from tool-supplier Tom Hall Enterprises. U-Lock Tool Released [Monkey Like Shiny via Trackosaurus Rex and Corpus Fixie] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Apr 2010 | 6:46 am Gamertell at Wondercon 2010 in San Francisco, California (with photos)FROM GAMERTELL - Comics, anime, and movies? Northern California’s Wondercon is back again and this year it’s packed with movie madness and their sparkling stars. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 5 Apr 2010 | 6:30 am World’s First Android TV Comes from Sweden
A Swedish company will be the first to sell an internet-connected, Android-based TV set. The TV, from the amazingly-named People of Lava, will also be the first television made in Sweden for decades. The TV is set, fittingly, to enter beta-testing in early Summer, and other than size and price, tech-specs are still to be finalized. The first model will have a 42-inch high-definition LED screen and cost between $2,000 and $2,500 ($2,700 and $3,400). This will be followed by 47 and 55-inch models. An internet-connected TV is surely a Good Thing, allowing things like YouTube, Netflix and Hulu to stream straight to the big screen. The use of Android, too, seems smart: it already works, it’s free and it is all about the internet. But after video-streaming, and perhaps a news or weather screensaver, we don’t see a whole lot point in other services. The People of Lava TV will come with a browser, Google Maps, and you’ll be able to grab more apps (Twitter and Facebook head the list). But these will require a keyboard, and if you’re going to grab a keyboard, why not just grab your laptop, cellphone or even iPad off the coffee table? This has the added advantage of not annoying everyone else in the room. The web-TV is the future, but just treating it as a giant-screened PC is the wrong thing to do. Take this in the direction of Boxee, however, and we’re willing to talk. Company site [People of Lava. Thanks, Robert!] Press release [PDF] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 5 Apr 2010 | 5:51 am
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There were a bunch of USB keys sent out to gaming outlets today, with no return address and only a cryptic message. What could it mean? 
We’re hearing that iTunes will be implementing Facebook Connect support in the near future, allowing users to share some of their recent purchases with their friends on Facebook. We’re still gathering more details, but it sounds like this could happen quite soon.
Uh oh! Sounds like someone is going to be in trouble. The word is out on the probable spec and pricing on the HP Slate, and HP is definitely aware of the iPad. Obviously an internal document, it’s very interesting to see exactly what HP considers a threat, and what they consider to be an advantage. 
So Lord of the Rings (hereafter called LOTR) is coming out on Blu-ray tomorrow. Cool, having it in HD will nice. Better sound and 
This May, Google is holding its annual I/O conference, where it invites thousands of developers to learn about the latest Google and web technologies. Last year, Google had its first (of many) “Oprah Moments” when it made the 
Don’t look now, but Windows 7 is taking over. And while Vista is still in the number 2 spot overall, Windows 7 has reached that critical 10% milestone almost a year earlier then Vista. Having used both version of the OS, it’s pretty obvious why.
This weekend, as hundreds of thousands of people explored their iPads for the first time, many of them tried downloading the iPad edition of the App Store’s most popular application ever: Facebook. What they found was an application called Facebook Ultimate, featuring a sleek version of the familiar ‘f’ logo. The application quickly rose through the ranks to become one of the App Store’s top selling iPad applications. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent to these users that the application simply wasn’t very good, and that it wasn’t created by Facebook at all. And now, two days after the application rose to prominence, Apple has removed it from the App Store.
MySpace is preparing to add Facebook Connect features to its main service, we’ve confirmed from a source within MySpace. This will be the first time MySpace will publicly conceded defeat to Facebook over ownership of the social graph, and it’s more than a touchy subject internally.
As we’ve reported over the past few days, a number of online video sites are 
Apple has just sent out invites to press inviting them to a special event where they’ll “Get a sneak peek into the future of iPhone OS”. 
At launch Google’s stab at social networking outraged many at the lack of concern over privacy. Since launch, Google has made many changes (rather quickly too) in efforts to right the wrongs the company committed. Rumored to be tomorrow, Google will reset everyone’s privacy, asking users to confirm their settings.
A Maryland man, caught trying to meet a girl online who he believed was 13 years old, was sentenced to 30 years without use of a computer “for any reason.” The convicted man was formerly an applied systems engineer. A Federal Appeals court has ruled the original sentence was impractical in today’s society.
Internal ordering systems always seems to be a good source of information for upcoming handset availability. Well, a good source assuming there is an employee ready and willing to leak those screenshots. Thankfully, that seems to be the case with Sprint as of late. And based on that it would appear as if the BlackBerry 9650, the BlackBerry 8230 and the Motorola ES400 are going to be available sooner than later. Of course, the Tour (9650) sounds nice, but I cannot imagine that many have been holding out for the Pearl Flip (8230) or the Motorola ES400 at this point. That said, if nothing else it brings more options to Sprint, and that alone may be considered good enough. 
