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Reminder: speaking in London tomorrow nightA reminder for Londoners: I'm giving a talk tomorrow, May 8 at 7PM at the Nettlefold Hall in West Norwood (SE27). The library there has asked me to come in and talk about how I use technology to write and publish my work. It's free, but seats are limited, so they're asking you to RSVP. Hope to see you there!Source: Boing Boing | 7 May 2010 | 4:15 am Launch abort system for Orion spacecraft performs flawlessly in test - Silver City Sun News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 7 May 2010 | 4:11 am Layar Introduces Layar Stream to Help You Find Popular Nearby AR ContentAmsterdam-based mobile augmented reality developers Layar are announcing today the launch a new service that will make it easy for users to discover the most popular local AR content from their iPhones...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 May 2010 | 4:00 am Kapow adds IDE to Web data integrator (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - Kapow Technologies will add next week a development environment to its Kapow Web Data Server for Web data access and enterprise integration.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 7 May 2010 | 4:00 am Solarfun Power Holdings to Announce First Quarter 2010 Financial Results on May 26, 2010Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 May 2010 | 3:47 am TIMELINE-Key dates in India's Ambani brothers' disputeMay 7 (Reuters) - India's Supreme Court ruled in favour of billionaire businessman Mukesh Ambani in a long-running dispute with his brother over the country's largest gas find, effectively giving the government...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 May 2010 | 3:41 am India's Anil Ambani:no plans to file review petitionMUMBAI, May 7 (Reuters) - Indian billionaire Anil Ambani said on Friday his firm Reliance Natural has no plans to file a review petition in the Supreme Court.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 May 2010 | 3:30 am Bain shortlists buyers for Outback Asia assets-sourcesSEOUL/HONG KONG, May 7 (Reuters) - Buyout firms Unitas, Permira [PERM.UL], and Barings Private Equity are among the shortlisted bidders for the sale of Outback Steakhouse's Asian assets, in a deal valued...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 May 2010 | 3:16 am Bain shortlists buyers for Outback Asia assets-sourcesSEOUL/HONG KONG, May 7 (Reuters) - Buyout firms Unitas, Permira [PERM.UL], and Barings Private Equity are among the shortlisted bidders for the sale of Outback Steakhouse's Asian assets, in a deal valued...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 May 2010 | 3:16 am Naked scanner reveals airport screener's tiny penis, sparks steel baton fight with fellow officers
Wayne sez, "Miami airport screeners made fun of one of their own after seeing his small penis on their imaging scan. It ended up with small penis beating someone else with a steel baton."
Screener Rolando Negrin's private body parts were observed by his Transportation Security Administration colleagues conducting training on the airport's full-body imaging machines.I declined the naked scanner at Logan in Boston last weekend. The TSA agents were momentarily panicked (and one kept showing me a teeny, tiny printout of a scan and saying, "This is all we see, why you worried, this is all we see"). But after a few moments, they actually got their stories straight and decided what the procedure would be, and I got a fast, cursory pat-down that wasn't any more invasive than the one I usually get when I set off the metal detector. I'd recommend it to everyone. Cops: Airport screeners' quarrel about private parts leads to beating (Thanks, Wayne!) (Image: IMG_5274r, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from glenmaclarty's photostream)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 7 May 2010 | 3:16 am Naked scanner reveals airport screener's tiny penis, sparks steel baton fight with fellow officersWayne sez, "Miami airport screeners made fun of one of their own after seeing his small penis on their imaging scan. It ended up with small penis beating someone else with a steel baton." Screener...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 May 2010 | 3:16 am Longphone is a Prime Sponsor in ITW 2010Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 May 2010 | 3:16 am Longphone is a Prime Sponsor in ITW 2010PARIS, May 7, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- - Longphone to Sponsor International Telecommunications Week (ITW) 2010 Longphone is a Prime Sponsor of this year's ITW, which will take place in Washington DC, USA between the 24th and the 26th of May.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 7 May 2010 | 3:16 am TABLE-Kamei -2009/10 group forecastCONSOLIDATED EARNINGS ESTIMATES (in billions of yen unless specified)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 May 2010 | 3:15 am Gamer Wins $1M For Pitching Virtual "Perfect Game"A few months ago, 2K Sports announced a unique contest to promote a new game they were working on, Major League Baseball 2K10. They said whichever gamer was the first to pitch a perfect game and provide proof would win $1 million, with the contest running for two months. Reader yukk tips news that the two months have now passed, and 2K Sports has announced a winner. It turns out the prize was won on the very first day, by a player who had put less than an hour and a half of effort into it.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 7 May 2010 | 3:09 am UPDATE 2-ITV's outlook uncertain post-election, shares hitLONDON, May 7 (Reuters) - ITV , Britain's biggest free-to-air commercial broadcaster, said it longer-term outlook was highly uncertain after the election, although the World Cup would boost ad revenue...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 May 2010 | 3:03 am UPDATE 2-Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani wins gas ruling* Reliance Ind shares up nearly 5 pct, RNRL slumps 27 pct (Adds details, quotes, background)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 May 2010 | 2:43 am PREVIEW-NicOx faces crunch time at naproxcinod U.S. panel* U.S. panel meeting on May 12, FDA decision due by July 23Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 7 May 2010 | 2:42 am AU Optronics Corp. Reports April 2010 Consolidated RevenueHSINCHU, Taiwan, May 7 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- AU Optronics Corp. ("AUO" or the "Company") (TAIEX: 2409; NYSE: AUO) today announced its preliminary consolidated April 2010 revenue of NT$41,154 million, up by 1.2% from March and 68.9% year-over-year. Large-sized panel (a) shipments for April 2010, with applications on desktop monitor, notebook PC, LCD TV and other applications amounted to approximately 9.66 million units, decreasing by a mere 1.1% from the previous month.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 7 May 2010 | 2:32 am After Climategate Attacks, Climate Scientists Fight Back - TIME
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 7 May 2010 | 2:30 am Rude Gameware Delivers Completely Wireless 360 HeadsetBy Chris Scott Barr One of the reasons I enjoy PC gaming is that you have a lot more choices when it comes to your peripherals. I can pick my keyboard and mouse, or even choose to use a controller for...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 May 2010 | 2:19 am Neanderthals and humans interbred, fossils indicate - USA Today
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 7 May 2010 | 2:18 am Short Shorts Fashion Shoots - 'Keep it Short' in Vogue UK June 2010 Rocks Luscious Legs (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) With summer starting, 'Keep it Short' in Vogue UK June 2010 is an editorial that pulls out all the leggy fashions. Every image features a pair of shorts, some of which are quite short...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 May 2010 | 2:03 am Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc. Announces Monthly Net RevenuesTAIPEI, Taiwan, May 7 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 7 May 2010 | 2:00 am Duncan Niederauer: This Was a Feature, Not a BugNYSE Euronext CEO Duncan Niederauer cagily blaming non-NYSE electronic markets for today's air pocket. He says NYSE was "going slow" because of market action, so trading briefly moved...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 May 2010 | 1:47 am Women blame BlackBerrys and iPhones for poor sex lifeAccording to new research by by pharmaceutical firm Bayer, modern gadgets such as the Blackberry and iPhone are ruining women's sex lives because their husbands are too distracted in the bedroom. More...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 May 2010 | 1:40 am Olympic Medal Lights - Tom Dixon Void Lamps Let Anyone Be a World Champion (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) These Tom Dixon Void Lamps reference the 2010 Vancouver Olympic medals, and their design was inspired by vacuum flasks. The Olympics provided so much inspiration that it's only natural...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 May 2010 | 1:32 am Judge nixes media request for iPhone warrantA San Mateo County judge on Thursday refused to consider a request by media organizations to learn the justification police used to search a Gizmodo editor's home for information about the sale of a possible...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 May 2010 | 1:30 am The Lazy Medium [Voices]By The Economist A middle-aged couple sits in front of a TV set. He flicks idly through a magazine, she holds a drink. An advertisement for Marks & Spencer, a British retailer, comes on. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 7 May 2010 | 1:05 am You, Your Doctor and the Internet [Voices]By Judy Foreman, Writer, Los Angeles Times You’ve just started treatment with a new psychiatrist, whom you like very much. Should you “friend” her on Facebook? If she says yes, what if she finds those pictures of you dancing drunkenly with the lampshade on your head — after you told her you don’t drink anymore? Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 7 May 2010 | 1:04 am Meet the New Frontline Bloggers: Security Contractors [Voices]By Noah Shachtman, Editor, Danger Room, Wired.com The frontline soldier blogs have largely come and gone — victims of the military’s confusing, often contradictory, approach to social media. But you can still get unfiltered reports, straight from Afghanistan’s war zones. Private security contractors are now writing the new must-read online diaries from the battlefield. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 7 May 2010 | 1:03 am Living in Lavatories - Graham Peck and Tracy Woodhouse Move Into Revamped Victorian Toilet (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) British couple Graham Peck and Tracy Woodhouse have moved into a revamped Victorian toilet that was open in the 1900s. The pair had always thought that this historic public restroom...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 May 2010 | 1:02 am Too Big and Too Hard [Voices]By John Davison, EVP of Content, GamePro Media Since we rebooted GamePro at the beginning of the year we’ve spent an awful lot of time talking to game designers and creative directors in an effort to try and get into their heads and find out what makes them tick. While we’ve heard lots of different stories about what motivates them to get out of bed in the morning, there have been a surprising number of common threads that we’ve pulled from each of these conversations. Most pervasive is the notion that the games business is currently going through a once-in-a-lifetime period that should be relished as much as humanly possible. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 7 May 2010 | 1:02 am Viacom v YouTube is a Microcosm of the Entertainment Industry [Voices]By Cory Doctorow, Co-Editor, BoingBoing.net As Viacom’s (VIA) lawsuit against YouTube inches through the US judicial system, YouTube’s chief counsel, Zahavah Levine, posted a bombshell to the company’s weblog: writing after the release of previously sealed documents, he said that even as Viacom was suing YouTube for allowing infringing copies of its content to be posted by YouTube users, Viacom was also using at least 18 marketing agencies to secretly upload its videos to YouTube. It even had the agencies “rough up” the clips before uploading, wrote Levine, so that they’d appear to be illegitimate, smuggled copies, imbued with forbidden sexiness. He claimed that in a moment of Pythonesque petard-hoisting, Viacom even sent copyright complaints to YouTube over some of these videos, which it subsequently followed up with sheepish retractions when it became clear that the infringer in question was another arm of Viacom. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 7 May 2010 | 1:01 am FCC Web Rules Create Pushback [Voices]By Amy Schatz and Spencer E. Ante, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal The head of the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday outlined a proposal for regulating the Internet that he described as a “third way,” or middle ground between “heavy-handed” regulation and a do-nothing approach that could hurt competition and leave consumers unprotected. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is proposing to promote competition and preserve the free flow of Web traffic by applying to broadband Internet service certain provisions of rules designed to regulate traffic on copper-wire telephone networks. Big phone and cable companies, which provide much of the nation’s broadband service, expressed dismay at the FCC chairman’s decision to extend his regulatory authority to broadband, predicting it would damp investment and lead to court battles that could last years. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 7 May 2010 | 1:00 am Databerry, Inc. Joins Rackspace Partner NetworkBOCA RATON, Fla., May 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Databerry, Inc. announced today that it has joined the Partner Network with Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX), the world's leader in the web hosting and cloud computing industry.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 7 May 2010 | 1:00 am UMC Reports Sales for April 2010TAIPEI, Taiwan, May 7 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- United Microelectronics Corporation (NYSE: UMC; TAIEX: 2303), (UMC) today reported unaudited net sales for the month of April 2010. Revenues for April 2010 Period 2010 2009 Y/Y Change Y/Y(%) M/M(%) April 9,319,288 6,877,372 2,441,916 +35.51% -1.69% Jan.-Apr.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 7 May 2010 | 12:50 am TweetyMail: It’s Twitter Over Email. And It Works
TweetyMail is Twitter over email. Yes, it’s that simple. Imagine never having to go to a Twitter client at all. If you want a list of the newest tweets from the people you follow, you just shoot off an email and back a new one comes with the tweets. If you want to tweet yourself, you just shoot off another email. Maybe you want to follow someone? Another email. Retweet? You get the picture. This works because each Twitter action has a different TweetyMail email address. So if I want to unfollow a user, for example, I would simple email that username to unfollow@tweetymail.com. If I want to send a DM to a user, I would send an email to message@tweetymail.com. And so on. Obviously, for this to work, you need to link up an email account you control to TweetyMail. But once you do that and verify it’s actually your address, you’re good to go. And you can hook up multiple addresses. And there’s another benefit to using TweetyMail: improved follower and DM notifications. This is slightly more complicated to set up as TweetyMail gives you a special address that you then have to enter as your main email address on Twitter.com (this is where they figure out which email to send your notifications to). In TweetyMail’s new follower notification email you get things such as one-click follow, a full bio, and most recent tweets. It’s much better than what Twitter itself gives you. With TweetyMail you can also easily set up alerts for tweets from a certain user, search terms, or mentions. All of these will be sent to your email address until you turn them off. So yes, with TweetyMail you can completely bypass the need to go to Twitter.com (or any other Twitter client) ever again. TweetyMail currently has all features available for free during its initial testing phase. Eventually, the plan is to charge for some of the features (listed here) and to remove ads. If you’re addicted to email, and live in Gmail all day, this may be worth it for you.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 7 May 2010 | 12:38 am Cuban Culture Fashiontography - For 'Viva Cuba' in Vogue UK June 2010, Angela Lindvall is a Vixen (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Model Angela Lindvall braves the Havana heat in this photoshoot titled 'Viva Cuba' in Vogue UK June 2010. The spread exudes Cuban culture with summer prints, sultry colours, romantic...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 7 May 2010 | 12:33 am Scribd Switches To HTML5drfreak writes "This story from OSNews describes Scribd, a site for uploading and reading documents, switching from Flash to HTML5. The major reason for the decision was that HTML5 supports all the major points of the site's previous functionality, so they saw no point in using Flash any more. The big improvement in the rollout is that documents are now first-class citizens of HTML and no longer need to sit in a Flash 'window.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 7 May 2010 | 12:05 am Vintage LP: Huxley narrates Brave New World
MP3s of a 1979 LP featuring Aldous Huxley reading Brave New World with music by Bernard Herrmann! Can you dig it? I knew that you could. Side 1 and Side 2 Source: Boing Boing | 6 May 2010 | 11:47 pm Election fraud: Live footage of Albanian hunger striker campPhilippe Parreno sez,On June 28th 2009, Albania held its parliamentary elections. These elections were supposed to mark a watershed moment in the country's democratic transition: a break with the tradition of manipulated and contested elections. Unfortunately the story was to repeat itself.
(Thanks, Philippe!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 6 May 2010 | 11:28 pm UNESCO's bizarre World Anti-Piracy ObservatoryClaude sez,World Anti-Piracy Observatory (Thanks, Claude!) Source: Boing Boing | 6 May 2010 | 11:26 pm Decrepit Japanese university dorm still in useKyoto university has the last old-fashioned wooden dorm, a decrepit structure where Ethernet cable strung on the decrepit supports overhang robotics students working on the shattered floor.Yoshida-ryo: Dilapidated, decrepit and downright dirty (Thanks, Marilyn!)
(Image: Roy Berman/CNNGo)
Android Gains With Small Phone Makers in China (PC World)PC World - Google's Android is picking up steam in China among both big and small mobile phone makers, and the operating system is set to move even further down the price chain in coming months.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 May 2010 | 11:00 pm Wii 2 Delay Is Hurting NintendoBanjoTed writes "Michael Pachter's ongoing spat with Nintendo regarding the Wii 2 is well documented. Pachter is sure it's coming, Nintendo says it's not. Now the analyst has gone one further by claiming that the declining sales of the Wii documented in the platform holder's recent financial statements will only get worse unless it speeds up attempts to get its successor to market. He said, 'The reason for this is clear: the software being created is just not interesting enough or compelling enough to drive Wii owners to buy more than two [games] per year, and most of those purchases are first party software. We can blame the third party publishers for making shovelware, or for misjudging the Wii market, but the simple fact is that the publishers have to develop completely separate games for the Wii because its CPU is not powerful.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 May 2010 | 10:58 pm May 7, 1952: The Integrated Circuit ... What a Concept!A British engineer travels to Washington to explain his new idea. Oh boy, is this ever going to change things.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 10:00 pm Jeff Kisseloff book chapter about Kent State Massacre as PDF
Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre, and Jeff Kisselof, author of Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s, An Oral History remembered it on his fantastic blog, The Kisselof Collection. Forty years ago today, four students at Kent State University -- Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Sandy Scheuer and William Schroeder -- were murdered by agents of the US government... In 2007, I wrote a book called Generation on Fire in response to Kent State, but primarily as a tribute to the remarkable courage and rebellious spirit that sparked so many of the great changes that came out of the 1960s, The last chapter was devoted to the memory of Allison Krause, as told by her boyfriend, Barry Levine, and her mother Doris while I cried into my tape recorder. Here is a PDF of the chapter. Feel free to pass it around. I posted a few more pictures on the book's Web site here.The Kisselof Collection: 5/4/70 Source: Boing Boing | 6 May 2010 | 9:34 pm FCC chairman proposes increased regulation of Internet service providers - Washington Post
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 May 2010 | 9:26 pm Stephen Hawking's Time MachineBritish cosmologist Stephen Hawking has outlined not one, but three, theoretically realistic ideas for traveling through time, one of which he says is even practical.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 9:22 pm Movie Gallery to close all US Game Crazy to storesFROM GAMERTELL - Game Crazy ‘s parent company Movie Gallery is closing its US operations, giving gamers one fewer shopping option… Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 6 May 2010 | 9:19 pm CRTC Approves Usage Based Billing In Canadaqvatch writes with this from CBC News: "The CRTC has approved Bell Canada's request to bill Internet customers, both retail and wholesale, based on how much they download each month. The plan, known as usage-based billing, will apply to people who buy their Internet connection from Bell, or from smaller service providers that rent lines from the company, such as Teksavvy or Acanac. ... Customers using the fastest connections of five megabits per second, for example, will have a monthly allotment of 60 gigabytes, beyond which Bell will charge $1.12 per GB to a maximum of $22.50. If a customer uses more than 300 GB a month, Bell will also be able to implement an additional charge of 75 cents per gigabyte."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 May 2010 | 9:02 pm UK Conservatives lead early tallyThe Labour Party learned a hard lesson about Britain's weirdly inaccurate election polling in 1992, when its expected victory failed to materialize. Now it seems to be the turn of the Liberal Democrats, whose pre-election buzz appears to be dissolving at the ballot box. With voting close between the other two major parties, however, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg may still end up the election's kingmaker.Source: Boing Boing | 6 May 2010 | 8:58 pm Smoking is Good For You!*Nicotine jolts our brains -- in a good way.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 8:47 pm ARM powered Legos solve Rubik’s CubeSection: Gadgets / Other, Miscellaneous
The image capturing software that has to be used in order to do this is pretty extraordinary not to mention the robotics. This machine has been dubbed the SpeedCuber and uses the DROID’s camera to take pictures of each face of the cube and sends the solution to the LEGO NXT controller via Bluetooth. Pretty impressive. Now if I could only get that into my hands to solve my Rubik’s cube that has gone unsolved for the past couple years. Read [Wired] Full Story » | Written by Hunter Clarke for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 6 May 2010 | 8:41 pm Mayan Plumbing More Than a Pipe DreamArchaeologists discovered that Mayans had pressurized water -- perhaps a form of modern plumbing -- hundreds of years before European conquerors arrived in the New World.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 8:37 pm Six Startups Blast Off From The Web 2.0 Launchpad
Each company was judged by Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb, Ellen Pack of Elance, and Brian Singerman of Founders Fund. Taking the top prize (as judged by the audience) was Rhomobile.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 8:34 pm Arabic websites make history with native script addresses (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 May 2010 | 8:22 pm Local Retailer has the Best Prices and Biggest Collection of Women's Belts in the U.S.LOS ANGELES, May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Fashionistas know that a belt is one of the best ways to accessorize and outfit. The right belt can help dress an ensemble up or down depending on the style.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 May 2010 | 8:14 pm E3 2010: Mobile Games Pavilion expected to have a strong presenceFROM GAMERTELL - The Mobile Games Pavilion will make a showing at E3 2010. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 6 May 2010 | 8:02 pm Review Round-up: Custom in-ear headphones
There are a few ways to to get excellent audio out of a pair of headphones. You can have excellent components or a tight, close fit or special electronics. Or, better yet, you can have all three. I was lucky enough to be able to try three types of custom earphones/earbuds and am please to report that if you have the cash they’re definitely a great way to listen to music. I tested three distinct models from JH Audio, Ultimate Ears, and Etymotic. All of these buds were custom molded for my ear, a process that is, at the very least, undeniably weird. First a note on these headphones: they’re definitely not cheap. Not only do you have to pay for the headphones, you also have to pay for a licensed audiologist to take a mold of your ear. The mold is then used to create a custom-fitted earbud that fits you, presumably, less like a glove and more like a custom sports mouth guard. These earbuds are not for everyone but they are amazing bits of audio gear. I chose three different types, ranging from almost $1200 to about $400. If you love music and have a great deal of high quality or lossless content, this is certainly an option to consider. Full disclosure: Obviously these companies squirted gunk into my ears and made these headphones for the review. Here’s how the earbuds are usually made. Obviously you’d go to a doctor’s office and not my dining room: A quick note on durability: I’ve used the Ultimate Ears 5 Pro for almost eight years now and they only this year did they begin to break down and require repair by the company – a process that cost me a mere $168. In short, when you make the investment in these earbuds, expect a life of about ten years on these if you treat them well. Also a note on audio quality: these buds sound great with great files. If you’re listening to compressed MP3s, you won’t get a benefit. These earbuds are designed for folks on stage who want to hear the mix but don’t want to depend on monitors. They are “professional” in that they offer excellent sound reproduction in a noise-isolating case. JH Audio 16 Pro – $1149 What does this mean in terms of audio? Well, for one you have eminently comfortable noise isolation in loud environments and these also offer amazing performance with the right content. I listened to a number of pieces of lossless music and heard more detail than you’ll ever year in a pair of stock earbuds. “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd sounded like the band and that coughing guy was in the room with me while music by TV on the Radio and Portishead was a layered soundscape of amazing clarity. I talked to our buddy, Mike Kobrin, audio ninja extraordinaire, and he wrote:
Ultimate Ears 5 Pro – $600
These are custom audio products for people who want to recreate the artist experience. They are also the most dependable noise isolation solution I’ve found. Are they for you? If you need lots of sound isolation and want to hear almost everything in your high quality music while traipsing around the city or just sitting in your easy chair, these things can’t be beat. Video music by Volfoniq and Binrpilot.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 May 2010 | 8:00 pm Google Goggles bridges language barrierSection: Communications, Mobile, Web, Google
Google’s latest update to the application, however, takes on a monumental task of converting text to other languages. The concept is to snap a photo using a Goggles enabled phone, have the text drawn out of the picture, and then have the text converted to the language of choosing using Google’s translation tools. This could potentially be a travelers tool of choice when dealing with language barriers. If you wish to download the app, simple go to the Android marketplace and search “Goggles” or scan the QR code below. Read [Google Mobile Blog] Full Story » | Written by Hunter Clarke for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 6 May 2010 | 7:31 pm Hand washing dispels the decision demons - Ars Technica
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 May 2010 | 7:11 pm Alternite Disk-Tractions: X-Men animated series Volume 5 on DVDFROM GAMERTELL - It’s up to the X-Men to save the planet again from the mutants out to do harm, so catch up on their adventures with X-Men Volume 5 now out on DVD… Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 6 May 2010 | 6:58 pm Prosecutors oppose unsealing iPhone search details (AP)AP - California prosecutors have opposed unsealing details of a search warrant used in the unfolding iPhone prototype saga, saying it contains the names of two individuals of interest to investigators.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 May 2010 | 6:31 pm If you’re going to scan, scan right with the CanoScan 9000F
Yeah yeah, you can get scanners for like $40 at Best Buy, but you know Canon has got your best interests in mind when they put out a piece of hardware like this. They know what image quality is, and they’ve been making the pieces of devices like this one for long enough to know what needs to be done. At that resolution, you’ll never have to buy another scanner… if you’re okay with a gigantic, slow thing like this being your only scanner. If I’m honest, I think I would prefer something like this portable one. Who am I kidding, I’ve been avoiding printers and scanners like the plague for a good five years now, I’m not going to stop. [via Gizmag]
Source: CrunchGear | 6 May 2010 | 6:30 pm Review: Fun 'Iron Man 2' Pits Witty Hero Against Juicy VillainsRobert Downey Jr.'s self-assured portrayal of an all-too-human superhero carries the Marvel Comics franchise through a successful sequel. And there's more good news: Instead of being plagued by a muddled mix of supervillains, Iron Man 2 introduces an intriguing array of bad guys who serve as perfect foils to the main man with the cool toys.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Steven Levy Takes on Typos in the Kindle AgeA snipper-sniper editing snafu reveals the extent to which e-books cannot be fiddled with.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 6:00 pm iPad Games: The Good, the Bad and the FixableApple's hot new device offers a peek at the future of videogames. Unfortunately, most of what's visible could use a little more polish if the iPad's really going to shine as a gaming machine. A roundup of great ideas, clunky concepts and horrible misfires.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Microsoft's Dynamic Duo Make Social Media More MobileTwo phones from Microsoft. Two writers from Wired. Should you get either one? Read on, we'll tell ya.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 6 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Gallery: Firing the Army's Biggest, Baddest GunsFrom sniper rifles to grenade launchers to .50-caliber machine guns, here's what's firing at the Army's most powerful weapons looks (and feels) like.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Alt Text: Giving Valve Games That Special Apple TouchWith just a few judicious tweaks, outstanding videogames like Portal and Left 4 Dead can be made even more exceptional — and fully compliant with the magical Mac ecosystem.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Microsoft's Dynamic Duo Make Social Media More MobileTwo phones from Microsoft. Two writers from Wired. Should you get either one? Read on, we'll tell ya.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Steven Levy Takes on Typos in the Kindle AgeA snipper-sniper editing snafu reveals the extent to which e-books cannot be fiddled with.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 6 May 2010 | 6:00 pm AMD Undercuts Intel With Six-Core Phenom IIsEconolineCrush writes "As Slashdot readers are no doubt aware, Intel's latest 'Gulftown' Core i7-980X is an absolute beast of a CPU. But its six cores don't come cheap; the 980X sells for over a grand, which is more than it would cost to build an entire system based on one of AMD's new six-core CPUs. The Phenom II X6 line starts at just $200 and includes a new Turbo capability that can opportunistically raise the clock speed of up to three cores when the others are idle. Although not as fast as the 980X, the new X6s are quick enough to offer compelling value versus even like-priced Intel CPUs. And the kicker: the X6s will work in a good number of older Socket AM2+ and AM3 motherboards with only a BIOS update."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 May 2010 | 5:58 pm Mother’s Day Gift Guide 2010: Apple productsFROM APPLETELL - This mother’s day, there are quite a few Apple products from which to choose. No matter what your budget or how personal you want to be, there are options to fit your needs. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 6 May 2010 | 5:41 pm Google adds language translation to Android smartphones (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 May 2010 | 5:39 pm TechBA and its 500+ Startup Portfolio at TiEcon 2010, Ready to Collaborate With YouSAN JOSE, Calif., May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- This May 14 and 15, TechBA-Silicon Valley (SV) will be the Silver Sponsor of TiEcon at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 May 2010 | 5:24 pm Robot With Knives Used In Robotics Injury StudyAn anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that German researchers, seeking to find out what would happen if a robot handling a sharp tool accidentally struck a human, set out to perform a series of cutting, stabbing, and puncturing tests. They used a robotic manipulator arm, fitted with various sharp tools (kitchen knife, scalpel, screwdriver) and performed striking tests at a block of silicone, a pig leg, and at one point, even the arm of a human volunteer. Volunteer, really?! The story includes video of the tests."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 May 2010 | 5:07 pm Gadgets of days gone by: My Super Nintendo
I want to be clear here: I’m not just celebrating the Super Nintendo in general — I do that every day, as should you. I’m celebrating my Super Nintendo in particular. Because for almost 20 years now, this amazing piece of hardware has been my constant companion, and I want to give it the recognition it deserves. It’s been chewed on by dogs, dropped innumerable times, used as a bookend and a table, crushed at the bottom of boxes, and god knows what else. Several kinds of drink have been spilled on it, and many brands of chips have been crumbled over it. It has pieces missing from the case and I can instantly tell the first player controller by the bite marks. Through all this, it has never failed to work, even once. I’ve never replaced the controllers, the power cable, the contacts, or the RCA cables. Every game pops up like a champ after you blow on it a bit, and even though I accidentally leave it on for days at a time occasionally, it has never had it go out on me. For nearly two decades — and counting. If there were a lifetime achievement award for any of the gadgets I’ve used, it would have to go to this thing. Of course, the platform deserves accolades due to its amazing selection of classic games, but this particular one, right here on my living room table, is the one I know and love. C’mere, you.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 May 2010 | 5:00 pm Google Goggles Text Translation: A Hands-On Trial - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 May 2010 | 5:00 pm Understanding Facebook's privacy aftershocks - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 May 2010 | 5:00 pm Oclaro Announces Pricing of Common Stock OfferingSAN JOSE, Calif., May 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Oclaro, Inc. (Nasdaq: OCLR), announced today that it has priced a public offering of 6,000,000 newly issued shares of its common stock at a price of $12.00 per share.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 May 2010 | 4:50 pm eBay Partners With Gmarket Founder For $20 Million Expansion Into Japan And Singapore
Ku will become CEO of the new entity. eBay will have a 49% stake in the joint venture and eBay and Ku will both put $10 million each to the joint venture. eBay will also license Gmarket’s technology and brand on behalf of the joint venture, while Mr. Ku will provide local management expertise. eBay is trying to capitalize on the growing e-commerce markets in Japan and Singapore – where the e-commerce markets are expected to grow by 30% and 13% respectively between 2009 and 2012. And the joint venture is expected to be a foundation for further expansion in Asia. eBay reported stronger than expected results for the first quarter of 2010, with PayPal powering eBay’s sales. Clearly, eBay is looking to further its e-commerce revenue streams and sees Asia as a prime market for this expansion. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 4:39 pm Microsoft researching “4-D light fields” for better 3D displays
The idea is that instead of having the eyes looking at the screen and attempting to focus nearer or further from it, a microlens array is interposed, which refracts the light in such a way that the eye would be able to focus on where the displayed object would actually be. Here’s the full slide:
The idea is cool, but the technology to make this happen would be monstrously complicated. Current 3D displays require only a left and right eye image, and display that in sequence, or optically separated, or whatever. But this display method would need more information: virtual distance, relative object size, and so on, unless I’m mistaken and it can derive this information from the image. It’s all just research right now anyway, far from a commercial application if it’s even viable, but I like hearing what people are working on in this area. Like I said regarding Ebert’s objections to 3D, a lot of naysayers will probably be eating their words when the technology improves over the next few years.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 May 2010 | 4:30 pm Android Now Running On iPhone 3G (PC World)PC World - After just a couple more weeks of work, we've made tremendous progress and brought Android to the iPhone 3G. Although this port is slightly more rough than the previous Android on first-generation iPhone port, this marks an important milestone for the more DIY-minded owners of the millions of iPhone 3G devices that are out there.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 May 2010 | 4:30 pm How Do You Handle Your Keys?arisvega writes "I lost my backpack some time ago, but was lucky enough to have left my laptop at home that night, and my cell and keys in my pocket. The inevitable habit-change that followed was to start strapping my keys on my pants, so at least I would still be able to get home (as long as I kept my pants on). But I realized I had a lot of keys: one for the outer door, two for the inner, three more for my girlfriend's place, one for the office, one for the postbox, one for my bicycle, the car, the motorbike and the roof. ... Plus, I keep a tiny Swiss Army knife on my keychain that I really wouldn't want to part with. Needless to say, this makes a jingly bunch that eats through my pocket. I ask you, Slashdot people, how do you carry/safeguard a hefty, pronouncedly jingly bunch of keys? What are the alternatives? Any suggestions on clothing or technology? Would having 'The One Key' make things better, or worse?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 May 2010 | 4:22 pm Are You Ready, Foursquare? Here Comes Facebook. [MediaMemo]
The social network is finally ready to start rolling out its location service this month and has linked up with McDonalds (MCD) for the launch, Advertising Age reports.
It’s easy enough to make fun of this one, because really, who wants to admit to eating an Angus? (Had one in September 2007. Awful.) But then comes everyone else:
Internet scribes get accused, with justification, of slapping the “-killer” suffix on anything and everything. But this one really is a threat to Foursquare. Not only can Facebook replicate every feature on the much-hyped service, but it has something Foursquare won’t be able to boast of for a very long time: A sales team to match the location service up with big brands and a self-service ad platform that local businesses can plug into. Add all of this to a user base of 450 million (!) people and it really is a problem for Foursquare, if Facebook wants it to be. And that’s pretty much the defense I’ve heard when I bring up Facebook’s competitive threat to Foursquare boosters: “People always worry about giant Web company X stomping on zippy startup Y, but that almost never happens. Because giant Web companies are lumbering beasts that can’t move fast enough to take on zippy start-ups, and they don’t really care to, anyway.” And maybe that will turn out to be true, here, too. If not, it may make all the talk of $100 million offers seem awfully hopeful. Source: All Things Digital | 6 May 2010 | 4:17 pm Activision 1Q profit up, shoots past expectations (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 May 2010 | 4:04 pm Honoring those who give voice to the silencedIt's said that change comes through the concerted efforts of small groups of people who dream of better times ahead. And then do something about it.Today in Santiago, Chile, Google and the group Global Voices recognized three groups from around the world who are fighting for free expression online from Africa to Asia with the first "Breaking Borders" awards. These awards, supported by Thomson Reuters, are meant to honor those who are using the Internet to give voice to those once silenced, make the activities of governments more transparent, and standing up for the rights of dissidents.  The awards — given today at the Global Voices Summit where Internet activists from 60 countries have gathered — were originally announced November 3, 2009, when Google and others marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the aim of celebrating how the Internet has become a vital ally in worldwide efforts to advance freedom and political change. This is particularly true at a time when dissidents, journalists and bloggers remain under severe pressure in the online and offline worlds. An international jury of experts reviewed nominations from around the world and chose the awardees in three categories: advocacy, technology and policy. Each of the groups honored will receive a $10,000 grant to further their work. The winners are: Kubatana.net (advocacy) An online community for Zimbabwean activists, Kubatana uses the Internet, email, SMS, blogs and print materials to disseminate information to the general public. Cited for its extraordinary contributions while operating under in a tense and dangerous political atmosphere, Kubatana's contributions also include an online library of more than 16,000 human rights and civic reports together with a directory listing over 240 NGOs. Beyond its significance as a resource for information on Zimbabwe, Kubatana has also developed Freedom Fone, innovative software that marries the mobile phone to audio voice menus and SMS to give citizens new ways to communicate with one another. BOSCO - Uganda (technology) BOSCO was cited for its tremendously effective and creative use of long-exisiting technology to foster social and economic development and peace building in rural communities of northern Uganda. Launched in April 2007, BOSCO began as a solar powered, long-range wireless computer network covering locations in former Internally Displaced Persons camps across the Gulu and Amuru districts. Low power PCs and VoIP phones were installed in schools, health centers and parish offices, bringing Internet, phone and Intranet connectivity to remote areas. BOSCO's long-term vision is to build collaborative, web-based networks. Today it focuses on developing and facilitating Web 2.0 training, online digital ethnography and collaborative online communication mediums between Internet sites. The Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism (policy) An independent, not-for-profit media agency, the PCIJ was founded by nine Filipino journalists in 1989 — with borrowed office space, an old-DOS-based computer, a second-hand electric typewriter, and office furniture bought from a thrift shop — to promote the values of investigative reporting in fostering good governance, freedom of expression, and the people's right to know. In 20 years, the PCIJ has produced 500 investigative reports, two dozen books on journalism and governance, five full-length films and dozens of video documentaries. It has conducted a hundred training seminars for journalists in the Philippines and Southeast Asia, and won over 120 national and international awards. The PCIJ maintains a multimedia website, an institutional blog; a database site on politics and governance; and institutional accounts on Twitter and YouTube. Posted by Bob Boorstin, Director, Public Policy    
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 6 May 2010 | 4:03 pm Samsung No. 1 Among U.S. Mobile Phone Makers, Apple No.6 [Digital Daily]
Among mobile phone manufacturers, Samsung narrowly beat out Motorola (MOT) for the top spot with a fraction of a percent more than the 21.9 percent its rival claimed. LG Electronics ranked second with a 21.8 percent market share and Research in Motion (RIMM), and Nokia (NOK) ranked fourth and fifth with dueling 8.3 percent shares. (See tables below; click to enlarge.)
And where does Apple (AAPL) and its iPhone, which seems to have such broad mindshare these days, figure in the U.S. mobile OEM market? Andrew Lipsman, senior director of Industry Analysis at comScore (SCOR), tells me it ranks sixth with a five percent share. (Hear that Adobe?)
Clearly, Apple has some way to go before it cracks the Top 5, but the fact that the company has managed to claim so significant a share of the entire mobile phone market with a single smartphone that’s been available for less than three years is extraordinary. Source: All Things Digital | 6 May 2010 | 4:00 pm Video: Medal of Honor trailer reveals upcoming betaA new trailer just posted to the Medal of Honor Web site pretty much checks all the boxes on the Big Checklist of FPS Trailer requirements. Sad, dramatic music; military man talking to his wife on the phone in a reassuring manner “I love you, we’re OK because we’re trained for this sort of thing, don’t forget to have the car inspected,” etc.; flash, bang, explosion, fade to black. I really don’t know how many of these games I can take. That’s not saying it’ll be a bad game—I played it, and it is, in fact, quite good&,dash;but I do believe I’m tiring of playing toy soldier. There was a bit of news in the trailer: there will be a beta of some sorts, and it’s “coming soon.” Hopefully calling the genre as a whole tired won’t get me blacklisted from the fine gents at EA.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 May 2010 | 4:00 pm Summary Box: Cable, satellite firms post 1Q profit (AP)AP - STRONG EARNINGS: DirecTV Inc.'s first-quarter net income nearly tripled to $558 million, or 59 cents per share. Cablevision Systems Corp.'s earnings more than tripled to $74.2 million, or 24 cents per share. Charter Communications Inc. swung to a profit of $24 million, or 21 cents per share.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 May 2010 | 3:53 pm FlashFoto, Inc. Releases Yearbook Auto-positioner - New Image Processing Library Automatically Positions and Auto-flows Student Photos Into Yearbooks.OAKLAND, Calif., May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- FlashFoto, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of the Yearbook Auto-positioner software library. Yearbook Auto-positioner completely automates the arduous task of placing and positioning thousands of student portraits.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 May 2010 | 3:51 pm The Web Doesn't Need .xxx Porn Domain - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 May 2010 | 3:42 pm Google Latitude Has 3 Million Active Users, Check-Ins Likely On The Way
Okay, Google’s Steve Lee didn’t actually say that during the location panel at the Web 2.0 Expo today, but he may as well have. While Foursquare may have just crossed 1 million users, and MyTown now has 2 million, Lee revealed today that Latitude, Google’s location-based service, has 3 million active users — and some 8 million have signed up since the service launched. “Latitude is not dead,” Lee said in a half-joking manner, presumably refering to the fact that no one really talks about it despite all the talk of the location space right now. In fact, the service has grown 30% per month each month this year so far, Lee says. The reason appears to be the strong growth of the Android platform. Over 10% of all Android users are using Latitude, Lee said. Lee said that one reason it took some time for Latitude to take off was that there hasn’t been very good iPhone support. The iPhone is key for a lot of location services. The majority of users of Foursquare and all of MyTown users are on the iPhone (or iPod touch/iPad), for example. But up to this point, you haven’t been able to run third-party services in the background, so even if there was a Latitude iPhone app (which there isn’t), it wouldn’t do much. With the new iPhone 4.0 OS software, services will be able to run in the background and access things such as location. So it will be interesting to see if Google releases a native iPhone app. But right now, the aforementioned Android growth, and big time BlackBerry penetration is countering the lack of iPhone support, Lee said. But wait, there’s more. While he wouldn’t specifically speak to Google’s plans, Lee also hinted that Latitude would soon have a check-in component. When moderator Brady Forrest asked if Google would move from implicit to explicit location based on the popularity of check-ins, Lee said he does see the company moving that way. But he made sure to emphasize that they still see promise in the implicit model. “It will be a hybrid model eventually,” Lee said. So while everyone is worrying about Facebook entering the space, maybe Google should really be the one to worry about? After all, 3 million active users is nothing to sneeze at. But not so fast — Lee also noted that a full quarter of Latitude users have zero friends. Yes, zero. But Lee doesn’t mind that fact. The reason is that there’s another component Latitude has been working heavily on: location history. While a version of this is out already, Lee hinted that in the next couple week there will be a much more robust version. This will allow people who run Latitude in the background to get interesting information and data about where they’ve been. Foursquare also revamped their location history page recently, but again, since Latitude is always-on, they have a different layer of data. Naturally, privacy will be important with such a feature, but Lee says this information will be restricted to just users themselves. I’ve written in the past that Google Buzz perhaps should have started as a location-based service. Now it seems pretty clear that they are definitely taking location very seriously.      
Source: TechCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 3:40 pm Stock Market Sell-Off Might Stem From Trader's Fat Fingers122604 points out a CNBC story according to which "the catalyst for today's extraordinary price swing (at one point the Dow lost almost 9 percent in less than an hour) may have been because a trader entered a 'B' for billions instead of an 'M' for millions on a trade of Procter and Gamble: 'According to multiple sources, a trader entered a "b" for billion instead of an "m" for million in a trade possibly involving Procter & Gamble, a component in the Dow. (CNBC's Jim Cramer noted suspicious price movement in P&G stock on air during the height of the market selloff).' Unbelievable there are no safeguards to protect against this."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 May 2010 | 3:36 pm BlackBerry 9670 clamshell spotted yet again [Images]Section: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile ![BlackBerry 9670 clamshell spotted yet again [Images]](http://admintell.napco.com/ee/images/uploads/gadgetell/blackberry_clamshell-9670.png) We still have little else in terms of details and features, however the clamshell styled BlackBerry 9670 has recently taken some time and posed for a few more images. Sadly, I am still not really digging the look. Via [The Cellular Guru] ![BlackBerry 9670 clamshell spotted yet again [Images]](http://admintell.napco.com/ee/images/uploads/gadgetell/blackberry_9670_2_images_600.jpg)
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 6 May 2010 | 3:33 pm My summer memories as captured by a Sony Mavica floppy disk camera
Way back in the balmy summer of 2001, I made sunset time-lapse video using a Sony Mavica and a stack of 3.5mm floppy disks. I did this while working at a Boy Scout summer camp. Yes, I have always been a huge nerd.
My dream was to capture that moment during each season and so I set out to record the first one using a buddy’s Sony Mavica digital camera and bunch of 3.5mm floppy disks. So I grabbed a couple of camp chairs for myself and one of the hot lifeguards, and climbed up the observation tower at the beach. It wasn’t really that hard to capture the necessary images, but it was rather time consuming. I mounted the camera to the wooden railing and proceeded to take a picture every 15 seconds for, like, an hour and a half. That required a stack of floppy disks for the Sony Mavica I was using; it actually took fine pictures, even though they were 640 x 480. From there, I used Flash 4’s auto import function to load the whole lot into separate keyframes and the results are above. It was really that easy back then and still is today, although I’m sure you can use something other than Flash. Nowadays many cameras have a time lapse function built-in that will produce a much better result. Once mounted to a tripod, the camera should snap the pictures without user intervention, therefore eliminating the wobble seen in my video from me pressing the shutter button and swapping disks. But that method doesn’t breed memories like I created years ago. Unfortunately I never captured the sunset for the three other seasons like I initially planned, although I did take plenty of sunset pictures that year with the Mavica and the following years with better cameras. But I really should complete that time-lapse set. The tower I used is still there and I could certainly use the break from the Internet and society in general. Maybe as we say in Michigan, it’s time to take a trip up North.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 May 2010 | 3:30 pm How to REALLY save your favorite sci-fi show from cancelation
How can fans of a struggling sci-fi show save it from cancelation? It's a question I get a lot, partly because Syfy has from time to time saved shows from cancelation, and partly because like every TV network we cancel our fair share of shows.
The No. 1 method of choice for fans trying to save a show is writing letters/e-mails to the network that airs the show. This worked back in the '60s to keep the original Star Trek on the air for a while, and according to this article it may have had an impact on a few shows since then.
It's not your best bet though, because today EVERY canceled show has a write-in campaign, often accompanied by some clever item...Jericho fans sent peanuts, Lexx fans sent dragonflies, etc. It's so pervasive that it's become background noise. People even start write-in campaigns if we change a show's timeslot, or if an actor leaves a show. Right now there are containers of Fluff in the kitchen of our sibling network USA because fans are protesting the fact that Vincent D'Onofrio is leaving Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I took a picture of the Fluff with my iPhone so you can see. To save a show you need real impact, and you can't get that by doing the same thing everyone else is doing.
Also, by sending us e-mails about our shows, you're preaching to the converted. We WANT to keep the show, we're just not able to because there aren't enough viewers. In TV ratings drive the business, and viewers drive ratings. So what we really need are more viewers.
So the biggest way you can have a real, meaningful impact - the way that will work every time if you can pull it off -- is to find a way to get NEW viewers to try the show. And a LOT of new viewers. If a show isn't successful with 900,000 viewers, it's not going to start working with 950,000 viewers. It's going to take a few hundred thousand new viewers to make an impact. The way to do that is to go big. Instead of talking to us, talk to the critics and TV bloggers out there who have the most readers and try to get THEM to talk about the show. Do something so unique that your "save the show" campaign gets covered on the homepage of CNN. Find a way to get Jon Stewart to joke about your campaign on his show. Use tools out there like Twitter and Facebook that let you reach people on a mass scale. If you're sending letters to the network, send them to your friends too. And send them to your friends' friends. You need scale, and you need it quickly because... By the time a show is officially announced as canceled, the actors and crew are most likely free to find other work and some probably already have. The rest will follow soon, and it's going to be next to impossible to get them back. And once the show's sets have been struck it's going to be a HUGE financial hurdle to start the show up again. On a realistic level, anything you do to try and save the show has to be done before that. The last piece of advice I can give you is, don't wait till you hear a show is obviously in trouble, or about to be canceled, to start trying to help it. "Save our show" campaigns rarely work in reality, so ideally you don't want to let it get to that point. You want to get in early with "pre-save" campaigns, because once a show is perceived as needing to be saved, viewers become a lot more reluctant to tune in. The best "save the show" campaign I've seen is the one you don't have to use. Source: Boing Boing | 6 May 2010 | 3:28 pm Peeking at Google's New Search User Interface - eWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 May 2010 | 3:23 pm FCC Offers Regulation Lite for Broadband Providers, Pleasing FewThe FCC proposes just a bit of regulation for the net's tube owners, but free-market groups accuse the agency of attempting a takeover of the internet.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 3:20 pm FCC says it has compromise on key broadband rules (AP)AP - The head of the Federal Communications Commission thinks he has come up with a way to salvage his ambitious national broadband plans without running into legal obstacles that have threatened to derail him.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 May 2010 | 3:14 pm Harmonic Acquires Video Storage Company Omneon For $306 Million
Backed by Accel, Omneon produces video server and storage infrastructure for companies that produce and distribute audio and video content for television and the web. Omneon’s video server and storage technology is used by an impressive client list including the BBC, BSkyB, CBS, Comcast, Discovery Communications, Echostar, NBC Universal, News Corporation, Televisa, Turner Broadcasting System, and Viacom. The company has has impressive revenue numbers. For the year ended December 31, 2009, Omneon’s revenues were approximately $105 million, of which 67% were outside the United States, with no single customer representing more than 10% of total revenue. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 3:13 pm iPad Users Who Visit Yahoo Are 66 Percent Male, 10 Percent Foreign, And Love Flickr
Who exactly is buying all of these iPads? If you think that Yahoo users are representative of the public at large (as one of the largest sites on the Web, they are probably pretty close), then you can get a snapshot of the typical iPad user by looking at iPad visitors on Yahoo. Or maybe not. But that is exactly what Yahoo did, and it wrote up its findings on its mobile blog. So at least for iPad owners who visit Yahoo (there might be some adverse selection going on there, if you know what I mean), they are 66 percent male, tend to be 35 to 44 years old, and they love Flickr, Yahoo Finance, News, and Sports. In fact they visit Flickr 2.4 times the average user (which makes sense since the iPad is all about the visuals). And they go to Yahoo Finance, Sports, and News twice as much as the average visitor. Conclusion: the iPad is awesome for media consumption. We knew that already, but it’s nice to have some numbers to back it up. Also, a full 10 percent of Yahoo’s iPad traffic is coming from overseas where the iPad isn’t even available yet. Who’s been smuggling iPads to Europe?!      
Source: TechCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 3:12 pm More than half of Verizon’s customer base wants them to get the iPhone
It’s been said before, but let it be said again: Verizon better be kicking themselves right now. Not only did they not fight for the iPhone, they outright turned it away. This new 4,000-person survey by ChangeWave probably isn’t going to make them feel much better. The survey asked over 4,000 customers of Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile whether or not they’d buy an iPhone if it were offered on their carrier. Verizon’s customer base is by far the most excited about the idea, with 19% saying they would be “very likely” to buy it, and 34% saying they were “somewhat likely”. Sprint’s customers were a bit less enthralled by the idea, with only 11% and 33% saying they were very like/somewhat likely to make the purchase. With 11% and 28% in each category respectively, T-Mobile’s patrons were the least excited over all – but that’s still just shy of 40%, which is a pretty massive chunk. Alas, “Very Likely” and “Somewhat Likely” are the only options that ChangeWave shared the results for, leaving the “Oh hell nah” and “Whats an iPhone?” choices unrepresented. [Via Mashable]
Source: MobileCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 3:11 pm Synaptics Joins Intel International Science and Engineering Fair to Inspire Future Generation of TechnologistsSANTA CLARA, Calif., May 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Synaptics Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 6 May 2010 | 3:04 pm How to use the Seagate Dockstar on a LAN without Pogoplug
I originally reviewed the Seagate Dockstar a while ago an found it to be a nifty little device hampered by the fact that you must use the online sharing service Pogoplug. It’s essetually a Pogoplug dock, really. You can use the dock on your local network with any USB drive, but only if you activate local network access on Pogoplug’s website. Totally lame in my opinion. It truly limits the appeal of the device. Anyway, this is where reader Matt T. comes in. He has solved my problem and came up with a solution that unlocks the dock with the help of a little text file on a connected drive. He writes,
There you have it. Nicely done.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 May 2010 | 3:00 pm Lithium Technologies Picks Up Scout Labs For $20+ Million
We first covered Scout Labs, which was created in the Minor Ventures incubator, in late 2007 when it was still in private beta. More recently they updated their UI and improved on the product. We’ve found it to be best in class in auto-determining sentiment and giving brand managers a good real time overview of what’s being said about them. Scout Labs has raised $4+ million from Minor Ventures, El Dorado Ventures and Javelin Venture Partners. Lithium Technologies was founded in 2001 and focuses on a broader range of social CRM solutions. To date though their product suite has focused on retaining and communicating with existing customers. Scout Labs brings in the new dimension of seeing what the Internet in general is saying about your products and services. The company has raised $44 million in venture capital. We expect the deal to be announced shortly.      
Source: TechCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 2:58 pm Canonical Explains Decision to License H.264 For Ubuntutux writes with this snippet from The Register: "Ubuntu's commercial sponsor Canonical has tried to clarify how — if not why — it has licensed a closed-source and patented codec for video on PCs running its Linux. Canonical is the first Linux shop to have agreed to license the codec in question, H.264, from MPEG LA. Even though Red Hat and Novell are also available for use on PCs, they have not licensed H.264."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 May 2010 | 2:51 pm Opportunity to ask Facebook about privacy!The NYT's Jenna Wortham is interviewing Facebook's vice president for public policy, and he's offered to field questions about privacy and Facebook policy from her readers. Get your question on the list by leaving it in the comment section on Wortham's Bits blog. Source: Boing Boing | 6 May 2010 | 2:41 pm Will AOL’s Tim Armstrong Redefine Online Publishing? Come Find Out At Disrupt.
Why are you reading TechCrunch, or anything online, for that matter? We know it’s not because of flashing banner ads. And so do all the online publishers. Now that online advertising has failed to print money the way people hoped it might a decade ago, large content owners such as AOL and Yahoo are focusing on how to make more of what people actually want to read. AOL, in particular, is reinventing itself under CEO Tim Armstrong as a Time Inc. for the 21st Century. AOL employs thousands of journalists and is hiring hundreds more to help expand its local content. So we’re thrilled to announce Armstrong will be speaking at Disrupt, our conference on media and technology taking place May 24-26 in New York City. We’ve got a lot going on at Disrupt. Here at TC offices in Palo Alto, we’ve been meeting with the cool startups all morning who will be launching new products for the iPad, consumer Web and more at our Startup Battlefield. We also recently announced a Hack Day, an overnight marathon of creative weirdness led by a team of ace hacks. Disrupt’s early-bird rate is still good. Get your tickets here. As for speakers, we’ve got an impressive slate lined up to talk about what’s new in content creation, distribution, and monetization in the media industries undergoing major changes right now. We’re delighted Armstrong is coming by to talk about how one of the original Web biggies is evolving. Also speaking about the evolution of news will be Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau and ngmoco CEO Neil Young will address how gaming has gone from dedicated consoles to general-purpose iPhones. Many sponsors are helping us make Disrupt happen. In addition to those previously announced, we’re happy to be working with Flybridge Capital Partners, MailChimp and Facebook as partners. Product sponsors include Silicon Valley Bank, Lowenstein Sandler and Eventbrite. But wait! There’s more! Sponsors also include DESIGN about TOWN, WizeHive, Virgin America, and Buildasign.com. Check out these links for more info on becoming a partner sponsor, or on exhibiting. If you’re a startup, you may want to join our Startup Alley for early-stagers.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 2:39 pm Neanderthal Genome Shows Most Humans Are CavemenA new study of the Neanderthal genome has scientists convinced they interbred with humans.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 2:35 pm The Web Survives the Stock Market Crash [MediaMemo]Well, that was an exciting few minutes, right? In case you missed it: The markets just tanked–the Dow dropped a thousand points–and then came back. Blame Greece and/or a trader who is very bad at his or her job. (Really?) But while a stock market plunge is a big deal, it didn’t seem to be a wipe-out-the-Web-sized deal. Not even a Michael Jackson-sized deal. I’ve seen reports of wobbles at some financial sites, but the Internet in general seems to have held up okay. Which makes sense–the swoon was fast and scary, but only if you were the kind of person who pays attention to breaking news. Akamai (AKAM), which moves bits around the Web and claims to handle 20 percent of the world’s traffic, says today’s surges have been relatively minor. You can see for yourself, at this real-time traffic monitor.
If you click in, you’ll notice that Web traffic is up significantly in the U.K. But no reason to panic over that one–there’s a pretty big election going on. Source: All Things Digital | 6 May 2010 | 2:31 pm CrunchDeals: 100 AA Spider-Man batteries
Source: CrunchGear | 6 May 2010 | 2:30 pm Pill taking in 2010 - how your cell phone can monitor your medsSection: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Mobile
Got pills? Got relatives who have to take pills? Got a cell phone? If so, the Pill Phone might just become your new best friend. The software downloads onto “most phones” (a new iPhone app was just approved and turns the phone into not only a reminder to take a particular medicine but also a record tracker and just maybe, a snitch. The software allows users to set up reminders for over 1800 different medications. When the user is reminded they can select snooze or note that the medication was taken. Alerts can be set up so an email or text is sent to a care giver if a dosage was not taken. Most of the data can be entered into the Pill Phone web client making set up a breeze. Produced by the same folks that write the Pill Book, the Pill Phone allows access to the Pill Book database where users can research medications, potentially hazard drug interactions and see large images of what each pill looks like. The data is updated frequently, according the company. The software is sold as a service for $3.99 per month, depending on carriers. Currently deals are with AT&T, Verizon and Sprint. Company site: [Pill Phone] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 6 May 2010 | 2:23 pm VMware’s SpringSource Buys Data Management Company GemStone SpringSource (which VMware acquired last year) is buying GemStone Systems, a company that provides enterprise data management solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
GemStone’s flagship product is GemFire Enterprise, a scalable, distributed data platform that dynamically puts data where it is needed across a network to remove latency. Other GemStone products include GemFire SQLFabric, a memory-oriented SQL data management platform and GemStone/S, a platform for running distributed Smalltalk applications.
Source: TechCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 2:22 pm Brain-Scan Lie Detection Rejected By Brooklyn Courtblair1q writes "A judge in Brooklyn has excluded Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) lie-detector evidence from a trial there. However, the decision will not set a precedent, as it was made without even conducting a hearing on the method's validity, but on the principle, argued by the defense, that 'juries are supposed to decide the credibility of the witness, and fMRI lie detection, even if it could be proven completely accurate, infringes on that right.' That principle can be tested in later hearings, such as one scheduled for May 13, 2010, in Tennessee; in this case, the defense wants to use fMRI evidence it has already collected to prove its client is innocent. fMRI has been shown to be 76-90% accurate. That number seems significantly larger than the rate of false convictions."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 May 2010 | 2:07 pm Handy guide for a little light vintage camera restoration
If you’re prepared to take the thing apart (and why not, it only cost you a couple bucks), there are a few modifications and cleanup processes even the clumsiest among us can do. This instructable refers specifically to the Olympus the guy found, but the general instructions (and cautions) are applicable to many cameras from that era and others. As much as I like my old FTb, I’ve never liked the grip material, and some well-aged leather would really improve the shooting experience. And the viewfinder could certainly use a brush-down, too.
Source: CrunchGear | 6 May 2010 | 2:02 pm Nintendo Wii sales plummeting (Christopher Null)Christopher Null - Everyone loves that Nintendo Wii, don’t they? Why, just this weekend I went to a housewarming party, and sure enough, Wii Sports was up and running for the kids to play with. You can’t get away from it. Wii is everywhere.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 6 May 2010 | 1:59 pm Google Apps To Become More Connected—Adding Picasa, Reader, AdWords And More One of the virtues of using Google's products are the connections you get to the search giant's other applications. For example, I love that my Gmail account can connect to iGoogle, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and other products in the Google family, making the transition between applications seamless and easy. Google is now planning to bring this interconnectivity to Google Apps.
Google says 9 of the top 20 requests from Apps customers are for their accounts to work with more services from Google. Currently, Apps works with Gmail, Docs, Chat, Groups, Video and Calendar. Later this year, Google will roll out functionality with Apps for Picasa, Google Reader, AdWords, News, Finance, and other products. Users won't need to switch between their personal and work account to interact with these products from within the Apps interface. 
Source: TechCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 1:57 pm Clearwire to offer WiMax phones from HTC and Samsung this year
Whenever we talk about WiMax phones (like the oh-so-drool-worthy EVO 4G), we’re usually talking about Sprint. Well, Sprint’s WiMax is powered by a (not so) little company called Clearwire (which, in turn, is 51% owned by Sprint. Crazy, right?) — and they want some WiMax phones of their own. During an earnings call yesterday, the company disclosed that they’re planning on launching at least two WiMax handsets this year — one from Samsung, and one from HTC. One will be powered by Android.. and the other? Its a mystery! The language straight from Clearwire’s press release:
Let’s break that down a bit. So, they’re getting a Samsung phone. It’ll be Android based, and have 3G (powered by Sprint), 4G (powered by their own Clear service), and WiFi. It’ll be “optimized for heavy video”, which seems to imply that it’ll have a big ol’ screen, and “[optimized for] video communications”, which strongly suggests that it’ll pack a front-facing camera. As for the other one: notice that while they’ll say it’s made by HTC, they don’t indicate which platform it’s running. Why say Android for the Samsung phone but not the HTC phone, unless the HTC phone isn’t running Android? HTC’s Peter Chou confirmed back in March that they were working on Windows Phone 7 handsets. For the most part, Windows Phone 7 is the only other smartphone platform besides Android and Windows Mobile 6.5 that they’re really dabbling with. Given the avoidance of the word “Android” here and the fact that HTC’s Windows Mobile 6.5 efforts presumably ended after the launch of the HD2, we could very well be looking at the first hints of a WiMax-fueled Windows Phone 7 handset. [Via WMPowerUser]
Source: MobileCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 1:51 pm 2009 US Emission Report Shows Positive ResultsOfficials said late Wednesday, citing the economic slump and other factors like increased energy efficiency as a reason, that the U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions fell a record seven percent in 2009.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 May 2010 | 1:50 pm Netbook Sales Shrivel as Apple Rolls Out iPad
The iPad isn’t considered a netbook, but Apple’s month-old tablet is already pounding on the budget computing category, according to market numbers. Research conducted by Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty shows that netbook sales have slowed down dramatically since January — when the iPad was announced, and shrunk even more in April when the iPad shipped. Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt concludes that Apple’s tablet is gobbling up netbook sales. “As her chart (above) shows, sales growth of these low-cost, low-powered computing devices peaked last summer at an astonishing 641 percent year-over-year growth rate,” Elmer-DeWitt said. “It fell off a cliff in January and shrank again in April — collateral damage, according to Huberty, from the January introduction and April launch of the iPad.”
Of course, looking at the graph you’ll notice a general decline in netbook sales over the course of 2009, so it’s possible that the downward trend simply carried over to 2010. However, corroborating the correlation between the introduction of the iPad and shrinkage in netbook sales, Huberty also cited a survey conducted by Morgan Stanley in March, which found that 44 percent of U.S. consumers who were planning to buy an iPad said they were buying it instead of a netbook or notebook computer. Netbooks — lightweight, 10-inch notebooks costing between $300 and $600 — were a sizzling product category in 2008. That year, manufacturers shipped over 10 million netbooks, and the mini notes continued to sell well in 2009. ABI Research forecasted that manufacturers will ship 200 million ultra-portable devices by 2013, which is about the same anticipated size as the current laptop market worldwide. The ultra-portable device category includes both netbooks and tablets, and at this rate, the iPad just might dominate the mobile PC market. This is exactly what Steve Jobs had planned all along. Apple resisted producing a netbook, calling the miniature computers $500 pieces of “junk.” And when Jobs introduced the iPad, he highlighted its strengths — web browsing, e-mail, watching movies and other tasks — while noting that netbooks “aren’t good at anything.” So far, it looks like Jobs’ sales pitch is working. Apple sold 1 million iPads in just one month. See Also:
Photo: Brian Derballa/Wired.com; charts courtesy of Morgan Stanley 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 May 2010 | 1:49 pm Welcome to Android - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 6 May 2010 | 1:41 pm Video: Hands-on with the Sony Bloggie video cameraAs stated in the video, please accept this hands-on of the Sony Bloggie video camera in lieu of footage of teeny-boppers, um, bopping around. I don’t need that headache, that’s for sure.
The video, which is much shorter than my 15-minute epic from the other day, pretty much goes over all the main ideas of the Bloggie. You whip it out, swivel the camera, hit record, then off you go. There’s really not much more to it than that, which is very much a good thing: you don’t want to be buried inside an instruction manual before recording your life. I do have a tentative idea of a legitimately interesting video to show off exactly what the Bloggie can do, so be sure to check by next week. Oh, and for whatever reason I said it’s $200, when it’s really more like $170. As always, shop around. Song credit: “Dewey Square” by Hugo “Droopy” Contini
Source: CrunchGear | 6 May 2010 | 1:36 pm Building Food Security In The Face Of Climate ChangeClimate and agricultural researchers, policy makers, donors, and development agencies, both governmental and non-governmental, from all over the world have just met in Nairobi for a one-day conference, ‘Building Food Security in the Face of Climate Change’.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 May 2010 | 1:36 pm Digg Dumps 10 Percent of Staff [Digital Daily]
Odd, then, to hear that Digg sacked 10 percent of its staff today for what founder and CEO Kevin Rose says is “the long-term health of the company.” “This is one of the hardest decisions we’ve had to make recently but we strongly believe that it is the right decision for the long-term health of the company,” Rose wrote in a memo to employees. “In order to achieve our goals,” he added, “we are putting more emphasis on the engineering and development efforts. In fact, we are still hiring for these teams as they are critical in getting us to where we need to be for the future, for our impending upcoming redesign, and much beyond. The only way for us to truly succeed is to adapt and adjust as necessary.” That 2006 BusinessWeek cover, “How This Kid Made $60 Million In 18 Months,” must seem like a distant memory now … Source: All Things Digital | 6 May 2010 | 1:30 pm The Google design, turned up a notchThis week we introduced our latest update to search, and I wanted to share a bit of our thinking on the design team. In short, we tried to take all the things we strive for at Google and make them better: powerful technology, snappy results, simplicity and a fun and quirky personality. Our goal was to take a design known by millions of people and make it better. As a designer, it’s hard to think of a more exciting challenge.During our process we focused on people’s rising expectations for search. As the web has evolved over the past decade, people have been typing more sophisticated searches and seeking out specialized search tools to match. To keep pace with rapid change online, we have teams of engineers working across Google to develop new ways to present and refine search results. Our central challenge with our latest redesign was to figure out how to squeeze all these tools and technologies into a single page. A common way to expand the flexibility of a website has been to add a left-hand panel of links, often referred to by designers as a “left-hand nav.” We’ve been creating mocks of left-hand panels since the earliest days of Google and have tested these designs with users as far back as 2006. Overall, we’ve found they can provide a great way to navigate without getting in the way of the main content, but they can also be distracting. Our users want more powerful tools, but they also want the simplicity they’ve come to expect from Google. As a first step towards finding that balance, we introduced the Search Options panel last May, including a toggle to open and close. This way we could quickly try out new search tools, such as refinements by time and content types. Using the lessons from Search Options, designers, researchers and engineers worked side-by-side to explore a vast array of possibilities for a permanently open panel of search tools. We made hundreds of prototypes and gathered feedback from user studies, Googlers and through experiments — including one of our largest visible experiments ever. In the end, we came up with a design that provides dynamic, relevant search tools on the left, while lightening and updating the aesthetics all around. Here’s a picture of the Search Options panel (left) and our new results page (right):  We knew that adding a left-hand panel would inevitably add some weight to the results page, so we took a number of steps to lighten other aspects of the design. The overall visual redesign started with the Google logo. Here’s an image comparing the old logo (top) and the new logo (bottom):  The new logo is lighter, brighter and simpler. We took the very best qualities of our design — personality and playfulness — and distilled them. The logo was the foundation for new icons and hundreds of tiny alterations designed to accommodate and seamlessly integrate the expanded functionality of the left-hand panel. For example, we lightened up the footer at the bottom of the page by removing the blue shading and the underlines on the links, lightening the color and expanding the search box. Here’s a picture of the old footer (top) compared with the new (bottom): While I’m very happy about our latest improvements, a designer's work is never done. We’re already testing additional refinements and we'll continue to listen to all of you as we work to continue making search better.If you’re curious, here are some of the other design prototypes we tried (you might have to click to magnify some of these images):
  
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 6 May 2010 | 1:30 pm 5 Things Apple Must Do to Look Less Evil
For a company that made its name fighting for the little guy, it’s a surprising reversal. In the past, Apple touted itself as the computer company for nonconformists who “Think Different.” Now the company is making moves that make it look like the Big Brother it once mocked. First Apple tightened its iron grip on the already-stringent iPhone developer policy, requiring apps to be made with Apple-approved languages, which disturbed some coders and even children. A short while later, Apple rejected some high-profile apps based on their editorial content, raising journalists’ questions about press freedoms in the App Store. Then, police kicked down a Gizmodo editor’s door to investigate a lost iPhone prototype that Apple had reported as stolen. Even Ellen DeGeneres and Jon Stewart have mocked Apple’s heavy-handed moves. Plenty of us love our shiny iPads, iPods, iPhones and MacBooks — state-of-the-art gadgets with undeniable allure. But it’s tough to imagine customers will stay loyal to a company whose image and actions are increasingly nefarious. We want to like the corporation we give money to, don’t we? Here are five things Apple should do to redeem its fast-fading public image. Publish App Store RulesAs I’ve argued before, the App Store’s biggest problem is not that there are rules, but that app creators don’t know what the rules are. As a result, people eager to participate in the App Store censor themselves, and that hurts innovation and encourages conformity. The least Apple can do is publish a list of guidelines about what types of content are allowed in the App Store. After all, Apple has had nearly two years and almost 200,000 apps to figure out what it wants in the App Store. Tell people what the rules are so they know what they’re getting into, and so they can innovate as much as possible. That would also tell us customers what we’re not getting on our iPhone OS devices. Formalize Relationships With PublishersPublishers are hypnotized by imaginary dollar signs when they look at the iPad as a platform that could reinvent publishing and reverse declining revenues. But after recent editorial-related app rejections, journalists are slowly waking up to our forewarning that Apple could control the press because news and magazine apps on the iPad are at the mercy of the notoriously temperamental App Store reviewers. If Apple wants to look a little less like the Chinese government, it should work with publishers to ink formal agreements regarding content to guarantee editorial freedom to respected brands. Tweak iPhone Developer AgreementApple’s stated purpose of its revised iPhone developer policy is to block out meta platforms to ensure a high level of quality in the App Store. Also, from a business perspective, there is no lock-in advantage if you can get the same apps on the iPhone as you can on other competing smartphones. Fair enough, but Apple would be silly to think it can keep the mobile market all to itself, and its developer agreement comes off as a piece of literature holding developers hostage. It’s hard to create new rules, but it’s easy to abolish existing ones. Apple should loosen up its iPhone developer agreement by snipping out a part of section 7.2, which states that any applications developed using Apple’s SDK may only be publicly distributed through the App Store. That implies that if you originally create an app with the Apple SDK, you’re not allowed to even modify it with different languages and sell it through another app store like Google’s Android market. In other words, iPhone apps belong to Apple. This rule is basically unenforceable to begin with, and Apple should just remove it, along with other similar policies. Apologize to Jason ChenReasonable people can disagree over whether it was ethical for Gizmodo to purchase the lost iPhone prototype, but the police action — kicking down Jason Chen’s door to seize his computers — was overboard. It was self-evidently a clumsy move: After damaging Chen’s property, the police paused the investigation to study whether the journalists’ Shield Law protected Chen. The proper action would have been to issue a subpoena to get Chen to talk about the device first. Apple, which instigated the police action by filing a stolen property complaint, should publicly apologize to Chen (no relation to the author of this post) and reimburse him for the damages. Get Gray Powell on StageWhen Apple accidentally leaked its PowerMac G5 a couple of years ago, Apple’s legal team forced MacRumors’ Arnold Kim to pull down his post containing the information. But a humbled Steve Jobs joked about the slip during his WWDC 2003 keynote, calling it a case of “Premature specification.” (See the video below.) He should do a similar thing when he officially unveils Apple’s next phone, by having Gray Powell — the engineer who misplaced the next-generation iPhone prototype — make a stage appearance. Powell could walk out and hand Jobs the phone, saying “Hey Steve, I found your lost phone,” or something similar. Some comedic relief, provided by the engineer who lost the iPhone prototype in a bar, can remind us that Apple is still a company guided by a man with a sense of humor. See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 May 2010 | 1:13 pm 5 Things Apple Must Do to Look Less EvilThere's a lot of negative press surrounding Apple lately, in light of recent actions regarding its App Store and the missing iPhone sold to Gizmodo. Here are five suggestions for Apple to look less evil.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 1:13 pm Sprint’s plan for Virgin Mobile: $25 a month plansSection: Communications, Cellular Providers, Mobile  Believe it or not, 60 million Americans use pre-paid phones. Given the recent economy it makes sense to go with the cheaper option. Following the logic of ultra-cheap phone plans, Sprint will be rolling out possibly the best pre-paid deal on May 12. The changes will come to Sprint’s Virgin Mobile brand and be targeted at 18-24 year-olds, though could prove useful for many others. The new plans for Virgin Mobile will start at just $25 a month. That $25 will get you 300 minutes as well as unlimited messaging, and data. To bring the minutes up to 1,200 will cost $40 a month. Unlimited minutes will cost only $60. If you want to use the BlackBerry service with the plans, that’s just an extra $10. The idea behind the plans is that most younger cell phone users are calling each other less and less, instead opting to communicate via SMS, email or IM. Therefore, why both with a lot of minutes? Why even bother with anything more than $25 a month for unlimited texts and data? The phones for the new plans, dubbed Beyond Talk, are the LG Rumor Touch and Rumor 2, Kyocera Loft, and the BlackBerry Curve 8530 which will come at the end of May. The Loft will be the cheapest at $69.99. The Rumor Tough and Rumor 2 will cost $149.99 and $89.99, respectively, with both phone being available off contract only. The Curve 8530 will retail for $299.99. The deals do seem like a great idea at first. Those who don’t talk much and want a cheap plan would be perfect for this deal. However, the choice of phones are rather slim, and features only one “true” smartphone. Then again, those who are looking at pre-paid plans probably aren’t looking for smartphones. Read [Boy Genius Report] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 6 May 2010 | 1:10 pm Live, from Google I/O!(Cross-posted with the Google Code Blog) Here’s the schedule for the keynotes at I/O — it’s also available on our agenda page:
Posted by Christine Tsai, Google Developer Team   
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 6 May 2010 | 1:00 pm SlingPlayer for Android sneaks into private Beta
If you’re the proud owner of both an Android handset and a Slingbox, you might be a bit bummed out right now — and rightly so. While almost every single other smartphone platform around has been slingboxin’ video content freshly piped from a remote TV for years now, Android has, thus far, been left out in the cold. Sure, sure — Slingbox for Android is coming. We just have no idea when, outside of “summer”. While we still don’t have any solid dates on a launch, the whole thing just took one big ol’ step forward.
Just think of it as a secret club that the whole Android/Slingbox-toting Internet will find out about instantly and be jealous of! You can’t really mass e-mail dozens of people and expect them to keep a secret — in fact, asking them to keep it a secret probably just hastened the leaking process. Seems like it’s as much of a marketing move as it is a “secret” private Beta, intended to get people excited. For us, at least, it’s working. [Via Phandroid]
Source: MobileCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 12:47 pm How Tsunami Warnings Fail, and How to Fix ThemDespite scientists' excellent tsunami forecasting ability, there remains a large gap between how they issue their warnings, and what the public understands.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 12:47 pm Laser Conjures Clouds Over BerlinBy firing a laser into the sky over Berlin, scientists have successfully created clouds from thin air. It could be the first step towards a radical new way to modify weather.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 12:45 pm Motormouse Looks Like a Toy Car
We have seen enough crazy mousepads but here’s a wacky mouse for Nascar fans or geeks obsessed with cars. The Motormouse is a computer mouse modeled on a classic sports car design and takes the toy shape factor very seriously. The trunk of the car-shaped mouse opens to store batteries and the receiver and even has a ’spare tire’ scroll wheel in there. And if that isn’t enough, the motormouse’s wheels are are real rubber, says the company. As for its tech cred, the mouse has a 2.4 GHz USB receiver so it can wirelessly connect to your keyboard. The $50 mouse comes in three colors: silver, red and black. The question is would you buy one to actually use it or is it just a tech gag gift? Photo: MotorMouse 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 May 2010 | 12:37 pm Washing Hands Makes Tough Choices EasierWashing is both literally and figuratively cleansing, suggesting that sensory experiences often reflect abstract feelings.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 12:01 pm Neanderthals, Humans Interbred, DNA ProvesA newly mapped Neanderthal genome reveals that between 1-4 percent of DNA of many humans today came from Neanderthals.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 12:00 pm What’s new in the Verizon iPhone story: 53% of Verizon’ers readySection: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
Coinciding with this news is another ChangeWave poll that found AT&T customers are finding more dropped calls, three times as many as Verizon (who claimed the least amount of the four carriers polled). One question AT&T has to be asking is not only how many Verizon customers would switch to an iPhone but how many AT&T customers would defect to get better service? Far too much has been said on a Verizon iPhone, good and bad. Analysts have gone on record saying they would expect Verizon to add 11 million iPhone users the first calendar year. Even this number of new iPhone sales adds $3.8 billion in revenue to Apple (placing the expected payment from Verizon to Apple at a conservative $350 each). Could that be enough to sway Apple? What would that mean to the App Store ecosystem? Could anything stop that super train of captured users? I suppose we’ll see, someday. Read: [ComputerWorld]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 6 May 2010 | 11:59 am Lego, Motorola Droid Combine to Solve the Rubik’s CubeIt can take someone anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle. But a neat contraption built out of an Android powered Motorola Droid phone and a Lego Mindstorms NXT kit can whip the Cube into shape in just under 25 seconds. Folks at ARM, whose architecture the Motorola Droid processor is based on, created the device and have called it the Speedcuber. With the use of the yellow Lego pieces and the droid, the robot is extremely attractive. But it’s not just about looks. An Android App running on the Motorola Droid uses the phone’s camera to take pictures of each face of the cube and sends the solution to the Lego NXT controller via Bluetooth. Check out the video above to see the cube twisted into the right configuration in seconds. The Speedcuber was on display at the Embedded Systems conference that ended Wednesday. See Also:
[via Make] Video: Armflix 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 May 2010 | 11:56 am NASA Tests Orion Capsule's Launch-Abort SystemA trio of high-performance rocket motors would whisk astronauts to safety in case of an emergency.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 11:50 am So-Called Smart Mop Is Actually a Dumb IdeaWant a mop that works? Pass this one up.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 6 May 2010 | 11:20 am On the Origin of DinosaursA new understanding of how dinosaurs evolved shows that these "terrible lizards" were once underdogs.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 10:59 am Planet’s Biodiversity Is In Dire NeedImage Caption: Endemic to Yunnan, China, the Yunnan Box Turtle (Cuora yunnanensis) was until recently believed to be Extinct, as it had not been seen since 1946. In 2004 it was rediscovered, and is now assessed as Critically Endangered. Collection information suggests that this species was not particularly rare around 1900, but only three individuals have been confirmed, all of them since 2004, despite at least 15 years of searches. Today any remaining populations are presumed to be exceedingly small and localized. Its precise distribution remains unclear. Remaining animals are under exceptional threat from collection, as they command a potentially very high price in the illegal pet trade, as well as in the consumption trade. Its presumed historical distribution is now extensively developed for settlement, tourism and agriculture. It is protected under Chinese legislation and is included in CITES Appendix II. It has successfully reproduced in captivity; a captive assurance colony could potentially reinforce natural populations should any be found in the wild. Image Courtesy WikipediaSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 May 2010 | 10:20 am Stream Water Study Detects Thawing PermafrostAmong the worrisome environmental effects of global warming is the thawing of Arctic permafrost---soil that normally remains at or below the freezing point for at least a two-year period and often much longer.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 May 2010 | 8:57 am SIM-Trim: Cutting Card Down to MicroSIM Size
Got a shiny new 3G gadget with a microSIM slot, but no carriers in your country willing to give you a tiny SIM to put in it? We have good news: Brit iPad owner John Benson took a local (and normal-sized) Vodafone SIM and cut it down to size using nothing but a pair of scissors, a huge Japanese chef’s knife and a healthy sense of adventure. It turns out that the standard SIM is internally no different then the new micro versions. The extra size is just plastic, and if you cut away the right parts you’re left with a fully-functional, iPad-compatible card. John only used the knife to press scoring lines into the card to make his scissoring easier and more accurate. He used an existing microSIM as a template (and if you do import an iPad, you’ll get an AT&T microSIM with it). The rather neat result is what you see above. And if you were wondering just how easy it might be to get the iPad working with a non-AT&T account, the answer is “very”. John accessed the network settings, input the correct Vodafone APN (in the UK it is just “internet”) and he was off. It looks like John was using a pre-activated 3G account, as his very short how-to doesn’t show the sign-up process, but still. It works, and we’re mightily impressed. How To Convert a SIM to a MicroSIM with a Meat Cleaver! [John Benson via Engadget] See Also: 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 May 2010 | 8:49 am Oil Containment Box Arrives at Leak SiteThe dome-like top of the structure is designed to act like a funnel and siphon the oil spilling into the Gulf.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 6 May 2010 | 8:40 am Linnaeus 2.0: First E-publication Of New Plant SpeciesFour new Neotropical plant species in the hyperdiverse genus Solanum (Solanaceae), which includes plants as diverse as the deadly nightshade as well as the more palatable tomato have been published in the open access online-only journal PLoS ONE by Dr.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 May 2010 | 8:30 am ARS Scientists Help Improve Potato Storage CapabilitiesImage Caption: ARS physiologist Jeffrey Suttle is evaluating how well new potato varieties react to being stored, a quality strongly desired by U.S. potato growers. Photo by Peggy Greb.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 May 2010 | 8:19 am First iPad Spyware in the Wild: Not What You Think
Today, Florida-based Retina-X Studios has announced a piece of commercial spyware for the iPad. Called Mobile Spy, the software sits on your iPad and silently logs all email, web browsing and even contacts added to the device. This information is uploaded to your online account where you can pry and snoop on the information at your leisure. It looks like Retina-X is pitching this at the business market, for bosses to keep an eye on their employees. Check out this quote from the press release:
You have that right. Derrick is spying and reading somebody’s email because he doubts their honesty. What about your honesty, Derrick? The software and service, also available for Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile, will cost you $100 per year. If you’re like me, you will immediately run a search for this on the App Store. Don’t bother, because you won’t find it there. Mobile Spy will only work on jailbroken iPads: “This is because iPad is not able to run more than one program at a time unless it is jailbroken,” reads the excuse on the product page. Retina-X is pitching a business solution based on hacking your hardware. Further, it wants you to crack your iPad, load on third party software which uploads confidential user to the web silently and undetectably, and it then wants you to trust it not to do anything nefarious with this information. I think its a great idea. If you do decide to buy it, feel free to also quickly jot down your credit card and bank details and mail them to me at the address above. Don’t forget the passwords! IPad Mobile Spy [Mobile Spy] First iPad Spy Software Hits the Market [PR Newswire] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 May 2010 | 8:19 am Sprint Hero NOT Getting Android 2.1 on May 7th
A Sprint Community Administrator has closed the thread where the original rumour surfaced, stating:
So, there you go. Pick your heart off of the floor, and go back to your shattered Android dreams (of electric sheep). And, just for a bit of salt in the wound, the Motorola Milestone got its update to 2.1 today. Sucks. If it’s any consolation, I’m on the same Android 1.5 boat as you with my European HTC Hero. Disappointed peanut. [via Cool Tech Zone]
Source: MobileCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 8:01 am MIT: Genes As FossilsUnraveling 2-methylhopanoidsWhat makes 2-methylhopanoids unusual from other lipids that are produced by bacteria is that they have an extra methyl group (one carbon and three hydrogen atoms). To determine which gene and protein are responsible for adding the methyl group, the MIT researchers analyzed the genome of the bacterium that Newman’s lab had previously discovered also produces 2-methylhopanoids.Once they found a gene cluster that is responsible for making lipids, they generated mutants with deletions in genes encoding proteins likely to be responsible for adding the methyl group. After pinpointing the gene that encodes this protein, they searched the genome databases to determine what other types of bacteria contain this specific gene. It turns out there are three major groups containing many bacteria, including cyanobacteria, but the researchers were not able to trace the complex history of the protein to determine which bacteria carried the oldest version.In addition to determining this history, the researchers are trying to decipher the function of 2-methylhopanoids, which could reveal something about what microbial life and its environment were like on Earth billions of years ago. They are currently conducting microbiology and molecular biology experiments to examine the features of membranes that contain the molecules, and they are also researching the environments where these molecules are found today.By Morgan Bettex, MIT News Office---Image Caption: The Rhodopseudomonas palustris strain TIE-1 upon shallow sediments from the Sippewissett Salt Marsh near Woods Hole, Mass. These sediments are well known for colorful microbial assemblages dominated by purple phototrophic bacteria. Image: Ryan C. HunterSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 May 2010 | 7:55 am Experiences To Learn From The Volcanic EruptionOn May 2-7, 7000 researchers from all of Europe gather in Vienna for European Geosciences Union. This is a great opportunity to exchange information and experiences on the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 May 2010 | 7:48 am Hands-On with Air Video, Stream Video to iPad, iPhone
Video files take a lot of space. Instead of cramming all your HD content into the relatively puny confines of your iPhone or iPad, why not stream it from your PC? Indeed, it’s easy to fill up a 16GB iPad in no time at all. Our own Brian X Chen Tweeted this last week: “Just synced 3G iPad for the first time and it’s almost filled to capacity (16GB). Oy.” You can get around these size limits by cleverly tweaking iTunes’ smart playlists to give you only the latest unwatched movies in your collection, but there’s an easier way. Air Video is an app which lets you stream any movie stored on your Mac or Windows PC to the iPhone and iPad. It will do this both over your home Wi-Fi network and 3G. As long as your computer is on at home, you have access to a limitless number of movies and TV shows, and they take up no space on your portable device. Air Video isn’t the only app that streams video like this, but it is the easiest and most reliable I have tried. And the addition of an iPad version makes it even more useful, especially for those who, say, watch movies in bed. It works like this. You install server software on your computer, and grab the app from the iTunes Store. If your devices are on the same Wi-Fi network, Air Video will see the computer and display it onscreen. When you tap it, it shows the list of folders you have chosen to share (you can add iTunes playlists, too). From there, you can choose a movie and press play. It will stream direct to your miniature screen as a Quicktime stream, and you can treat it as if it were a local file: Play, pause and scrubbing are all supported. You can even use an external subtitle file or switch languages, should the movie have more than one. And you can stream video from any hard drive on your network. An HD hooked up to a Time Capsule works fine, for example. But wait, you say: What about all my ripped AVI files, and my BitTorrented DIVX movies? This is where the magic comes in. Air Video will convert these files on the fly so they’re playable on the iPad and iPhone. Just tap “Play with Live Conversion” and your computer will start to convert the movie and — after a few seconds — send out a compatible stream. This killer feature means that you don’t need to do any tedious, lengthy ripping of your files just to play them on the iPad. If you already started watching the move, Air Video even remembers and lets you choose whether to play from where you left off, or to start over. The only files it can’t work with are videos with DRM. I don’t have an iPad yet for 3G testing, but I do have a new MiFi with a 3G card inside, so when I left the house last night I left my MacBook running. You need to configure the server to allow connections from the outside world (for home network use, no configuration is required). If you have a UPnP-enabled router, this involves setting an optional password. If not, you’ll need to punch a hole in your firewall first. To connect when outside, you need to enter a PIN and the app will take care of the rest. The lag is a little longer before the movie begins, but in under 20 seconds, I was watching a glitch-free movie, streamed from my home. The app automatically adapts the video stream’s quality to the available bandwidth. Poor connections may be more noticeable on the iPad’s bigger screen. Do I sound impressed? I am. Air Video costs just $3, and there is a full-featured free version that shows only a subsection of the movies in each folder. The internet streaming in a neat gimmick, but the real magic is in the live conversion. I have a 64GB 3G iPad on order from the US, but even with all that space there’s no way I want to convert the TV shows [my friend] downloads daily. With Air Video, I can keep them on my Mac and stream them to my bed. Sweet. Air Video Free [iTunes] Air Video [In Method] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 May 2010 | 7:47 am Motorola Milestone Finally Gets Android 2.1
Now, this isn’t as revolutionary an upgrade as all those late-to-the-party Hero owners are about to get (because they’re coming from Android 1.5, affectionately known as “old”), but it’s still nice to know your running the latest firmware. Well, at least until Froyo comes along. For all you eager bevears, you can grab the update here, otherwise, an over-the-air update will be floating your way in the coming days. [via Engadget]
Source: MobileCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 7:17 am Climate Change, Mountain Building Led To Mammal Diversity PatternsImage Caption: Golden-mantled ground squirrel in Utah mountains and fossil squirrel jaw document high rodent diversity in topographically complex western North America today and 16 Million years ago. CREDITS FOR COMPOSITE IMAGE: Squirrel photo by Catherine Badgley Fossil rodent jaw photo by University of California Museum of Paleontology (photo used with permission) Topographic pattern from MyTopo.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 May 2010 | 7:02 am Aseismic Slip As A Barrier To Earthquake PropagationCaltech scientists and partners explore the effects of aseismic slip in the aftermath of 2007 Peru earthquake as well as in models of the seismic cycleOn August 15, 2007, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck in Central Peru, killing more than 500 people—primarily in the town of Pisco, which was heavily damaged by the temblor—and triggering a tsunami that flooded Pisco's shore and parts of Lima's Costa Verde highway. The rupture occurred as the Nazca tectonic plate slipped underneath the South American plate in what is known as a subduction zone.Soon thereafter, Hugo Perfettini—a former postdoctoral scholar with the Tectonics Observatory at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), now at the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in France—deployed an array of GPS stations in southern Peru. They were used to measure the postseismic deformation—the deformation that occurred in the first year after the earthquake.When the research team—made up of a collaboration of scientists at the Caltech Tectonics Observatory and their partners in Peru and France—looked at the data from these GPS stations and compared them to the distribution of aftershocks in the area, they noticed something "amazing," says Jean-Philippe Avouac, director of the Tectonics Observatory and professor of geology at CaltechThe team's analysis of this data—and the conclusions they were able to draw as a result—are described in a paper in the May 6 issue of the journal Nature."After the earthquake, the plate interface slipped quite a bit," Avouac says. "But the aftershocks were tiny compared to the displacement. In other words, there was a lot of deformation, but most of it was aseismic." (Aseismic slippage, or aseismic creep, is movement along a fault that occurs without any accompanying seismic waves.)This was contrary to what had long been assumed about plate movement in the area. "We used to think the plate interface at a subduction zone—which extends in this case from the surface to a depth of about 40 kilometers—was only slipping during large earthquakes," Avouac explains. "In Peru, 50 percent of the slippage within this range of depth is actually aseismic."When the team mapped this aseismicity, they found that it occurred in a sort of "patchwork" pattern, says Avouac, with areas that "mostly slip aseismically and areas that mostly slip during earthquakes." As it turns out, some of these areas are always aseismic, "creeping continuously," he notes—and therefore act as a sort of permanent barrier to the propagation of an earthquake. Since seismic stress cannot build up in these particular aseismic areas, there is no stress to be released in an earthquake; any seismic rupture traveling through such an area would stop dead in its tracks. What was perhaps most surprising, Avouac adds, is that one of the largest aseismic areas the researchers found "corresponds with where the Nazca ridge comes into the trench.""This large area of aseismic slip is good news," he says. "It lowers the seismic hazard in that region, and allows us to be a little bit predictive. We cannot tell you when there will be an earthquake, but we can tell you where there is stress buildup, and where there is no stress buildup. Where there is no stress buildup, there will be no seismic rupture. That is where the earthquakes are going to stop."The lessons learned in Peru, Avouac says, should be generalizable to just about any subduction zone—Sumatra, for instance, or Chile—and probably to any other kind of fault as well. And so Avouac—along with Nadia Lapusta, associate professor of mechanical engineering and geophysics at Caltech, and postdoctoral scholar Yoshihiro Kaneko from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who worked on this project while doing his PhD at Caltech—decided to look at "the long-term evolution of slip on a model fault where two seismogenic, locked segments are separated by an aseismically slipping patch where rupture is impeded," they explain in a paper recently published online in the journal Nature Geoscience.When the locked segments (i.e., the areas in which stress builds up, and which produce earthquakes when they rupture) are far apart—or if the intervening aseismic area has frictional characteristics that make aseismic slip easy—they "tend to rupture independently," says Avouac. If they are very close together, they tend to interact and eventually break together.The interesting question, Avouac says, is what we can expect to happen when the two segments are close, but not too close—and are separated by an aseismic area, as was seen in the Peru patchwork. By looking at what geologists call interseismic coupling—"the fraction of sliding that is aseismic and occurs between earthquakes," explains Avouac—and by factoring in distance, time, and the sliding speed, the team was able to determine whether an earthquake that begins in one locked area is likely to stop when it hits an aseismic barrier, or whether it will be able to cross that barrier and rupture the segment on the other side."This model demonstrates that, based on geodetic monitoring of a subduction zone, we can not only locate the places that are accommodating plate motion through slow, aseismic slip, but also determine the probability that they will be able to arrest seismic ruptures," says Lapusta.The hope, Avouac adds, is that this sort of modeling can be applied to data derived from actual subduction zones. "We want to create models that will take into account the physical properties of a fault to produce a scenario of how the system might evolve," he says, in much the same way that meteorologists forecast the weather."Our study opens the possibility of predicting patterns of large earthquakes that a fault system could produce on the basis of observations of its coupling," adds Kaneko, "and suggests that regions of low coupling may reveal permanent barriers to large earthquakes."In addition to Avouac and Perfettini, the other authors on the Nature paper, "Seismic and aseismic slip on the Central Peru megathrust," were Pierre Soler, Francis Bondoux, Mohamed Chlieh, and Laurence Audin of the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement; Hernando Tavera of the Instituto Geofisico del Perú; Andrew Kositsky, a former Caltech undergraduate student, now at Ashima Research in Pasadena; Jean-Mathieu Nocquet of Géoazur in Valbonne, France; Anthony Sladen, a staff seismologist at Caltech; and Daniel Farber of the University of California, Santa Cruz. The work was supported by grants from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (through the Caltech Tectonics Observatory), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).The abstract of the Nature Geoscience paper, "Towards inferring earthquake patterns from geodetic observations of interseismic coupling," can be found at http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n5/abs/ngeo843.html. The work was funded by grants from the NSF and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (through the Caltech Tectonics Observatory).---Image 1: The 2007 Pisco earthquake ruptured two patches (indicated by the contour lines of seismic slip in red) of the plate interface along which the Nazca plate slides under South America at about 6 cm/yr (red arrows). The black dots show the aftershocks triggered by this quake. Two other large earthquakes had ruptured the plate interface in 1974 and 1996 (green areas). Credit: Caltech Tectonics ObservatoryImage 2: This study shows that the plate interface is a patchwork of areas differing in their frictional properties: areas with seismic, or unstable, slip (dark gray patches) and areas with aseismic, or stable, slip (light gray patches). Credit: Caltech Tectonics ObservatorySource: RedOrbit News - Science | 6 May 2010 | 6:49 am Evidence Shows iPhone HD’s Ability to Shoot in… HD
Y’see, the latest iPhone SDK allows full access to video capture data, and there are some preset values in the SDK that explicitly mention a 1280×720 video resolution. It’s pretty clear cut evidence, so you could almost bet the house that the next iPhone is gonna have HD video recording. Given that the most prevalent of rumoured names for the upcoming iPhone is “iPhone HD” this really comes as little surprise. Still, it’s good to have some kind of confirmation of a much-wanted feature before we get the official announcement on June 7.
Source: MobileCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 6:33 am HTC EVO 4G Preorders Start This Month (May)
Just check out these specs: Snapdragon processor, 4.3″ 800×480 screen, 8MP camera, Android 2.1, all topped off with a blazing-fast WiMAX data connection. It’s irresistible. So I’m excited to tell you that the all-powerful fiery-phone-of-awesome will be available for pre-order this month at The Shack. Engadget broke the news earlier today, and have a super-secret screenshot from deep within The Shack’s intranet to back up the claim (that’s it to the right). I have another confession for you: I don’t live in the US, so I will probably never get my hands on one of these demons. Heartbreaking. So, when you stride on over to The Shack to put your name down for this new piece of hotness, I want you to think of me and all the other under-privileged Australians that don’t have the luxury of a 4G connection. Life’s hard down under.
Source: MobileCrunch | 6 May 2010 | 5:43 am ClamCase Turns iPad into Laptop
Today, I’m going to show you three new devices. A Bluetooth keyboard, an iPad case, and a stand. A keyboard, a case, and a stand. Keyboard. Case. Stand. Are you getting it yet? I apologize for the Jobsnote iPhone parody, but the best way to think about the ClamCase is as a replacement for three otherwise separate iPad accessories. Because if you think of it as what it actually is - a box which turns your iPad into a barely functional laptop – you’ll hate it. The ClamCase has a bay up top to accept your new Apple media-slab, and a Bluetooth keyboard down below. The bezel has cut-outs for the various buttons and the two halves are held together with a wraparound hinge which can flip 360-degrees to either encase the iPad or get entirely out of the way. Yes, it is ridiculous to try to turn a specialist machine into an all-purpose computer, especially as you’ll be reaching up every few seconds to tap the screen. On the other hand, it does combine three popular accessories into one sleek (and currently CGI-only) package. The site is down due to traffic right now, but if Google’s cached pages are anything to go by, the price will be a more-than-reasonable $70. Video promo below. ClamCase [ClamCase via Twitter]
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 May 2010 | 5:22 am Video: Awesome Dad Builds Focus-Pulling Shoulder-Mount for DSLRJonathan Clifford Bergqvist is a pretty cool guy. When he decided that he needed a shoulder-mounted rig for shooting video with his Canon 7D, he decided it should be home-made, and fashioned from wood. But his dad, Erik, is flat-out awesome: Not only did he build the rig from scratch (and we mean from scratch - he starts off with a tree-branch with the bark still on it), he added a pretty intricate focus-pulling mechanism. Check the video of Erik in action: Yes, the shoulder rig is impressive. The beautifully turned handles contrast with the precision-machined focussing apparatus, but the real star is Jonathan’s dad. I could watch videos of craftsmen like this at work all day long. MkII is already planned: The hose-clamp is tricky to get onto the lens, so that will be changed for an as-yet undecided replacement, and Jonathan has the cheek to complain that the rig “does not fold.” Just do us one favor, Jonathan: When your dad makes another one of these things, remember to post the video. DIY Shoulder rig [Athanse Media via Switched] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 May 2010 | 4:36 am Rumor: Next iPhone to Shoot 720p Video
>AVCaptureSessionPreset640×480 >AVCaptureSessionPreset1280×720 If the allegedly stolen Gizmodo iPhone was the real thing (and it probably is) then this better-quality video recording matches up nicely with what looked like an improved stills camera. And in practical market terms, there’s only so much even Apple can get away with when it comes to cameras. It seems almost every other smartphone these days shoots 720p, so the iPhone really needs to keep up. Next iPhone to Record 1280×720 HD Video? [MacRumors] Photo illustration: Charlie Sorrel 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 6 May 2010 | 4:09 am
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To be an interesting third-party Twitter client these days you have to do something that really sets yourself apart. After all, there are no shortage of Twitter clients — and there’s no guarantee that Twitter itself won’t come out with features that eliminate the need to use your client. 
UNESCO announced the launch of its World Anti-Piracy Observatory in a 
This video is pretty amazing. An ARM powered Droid has managed to manipulate a mass of LEGOS from a Mindstorms NXT kit to solve a Kubik’s cube.
Every year at Web 2.0 Expo, a handful of promising startups are invited on stage to give quick, five-minute pitches to an audience of conference attendees and a panel of judges (you can see our past coverage on these events 
Google Goggles released last December as a Google Lab creation, allowing all users to access a Google search through a mere picture sent from a phone. Although the first release was a bit spotty on accuracy, the application has evolved to become a pretty good scanner for the world.
Let’s be honest: scanning has become a necessary evil. But as long as you’re doing what has to be done, you may as well do it right. I got decent results scanning 35mm film with an old bargain scanner, but if you’re planning on re-printing them (or re-printing prints, or what have you), you want the highest resolution possible. The 
Last fall, eBay 
The 
“Hey Foursquare and MyTown, suck it.”
The online video world has begun to consolidate. Broadcast and online video delivery giant 
Ah, when will it end? A new poll released by ChangeWave says 53% of Verizon customers were at least “somewhat likely” to switch to an iPhone, should the company offer it. In rough terms, that 48 million would-be iPhone customers waiting in the wings. Unfortunately for Verizon and it’s customers, we’ve got no evidence we’ll see a Verizon iPhone anytime soon.
This post here is for all our UK readers. Your prized Motorola Milestone (that’s “Droid” to all you yanks) has just been given a most precious gift: an update to Android 2.1, affectionately known as “eclair”.
MacRumors has been playing the old “dig inside the software update for treasure” game again, and has indeed come up with some booty. This time, it’s the latest iPhone OS4 beta, and the nugget inside is these two lines of text which suggest a new iPhone will shoot 720p hi-def video:
