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Google TV Coming This Fall - InformationWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 21 May 2010 | 4:11 am London's Mayor Promises London-Wide Wireless For 2012 OlympicsPax681 writes "[London Mayor] Boris Johnson declared that London will have all bus stops and lamp posts Wi-Fi enabled by 2012 for the Olympics. In an article on Tech Eye, Boris waxes lyrical (or as lyrical as he can get) about how it would be done at a Google Zeitgeist event in Hertfordshire. These would be public Wi-Fi hotpots; as such, would these break the new law on open access points? Would they be just the thing for people to use to infringe with impunity and anonymously bypass the chances of running foul of the Digital Economy Act?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 21 May 2010 | 3:53 am Facebook, MySpace Face Privacy Loophole - Wall Street Journal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 21 May 2010 | 3:29 am Does Seesmic For iPhone Stack Up Against TweetDeck And Twitter For iPhone?
Seesmic, Twitter and the iPhone have all been around for a couple of years, but for whatever reason it took a while for French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur‘s latest venture to come out with a proper iPhone / iPod touch application. As of this morning, it’s here, and it’s … great. The app, which you can download from iTunes via this link, lets manage their Twitter and Facebook accounts and update other social networks through Ping.fm integration (Seesmic acquired the company behind that service earlier this year). I’ll let you read the blog post and watch the video embedded below for more details about the Seesmic for iPhone app, but I think people will be interested to see how it stacks up against Twitter for iPhone (which was also released this week and is the latest iteration of Atebits’ Tweetie app) and TweetDeck. The short version: if you’re a fan of the latter clients, there’s a good chance you will not be compelled to make the switch. If you’re not and you find yourself constantly wondering which is the best between those two, Seesmic for iPhone is simply a really great third alternative. And if you haven’t tried any of them, I’d recommend you start out with Seesmic. Seesmic for iPhone is free, fast, smooth, and complete. The built-in Twitter client is well-designed and has all the functionality you’ve come to expect (timeline, replies, direct messages, geolocation support for new tweets, the ability to add photos, retweets, multiple accounts support, search, trending topics, lists, favorites, URL shortening and so on). But so do TweetDeck and Twitter for iPhone, of course. But Twitter for iPhone only supports the ‘new’ type of retweeting, and doesn’t give you an easy shortcut for old-school retweeting, aka ‘quoting’ (you can, but it’s cumbersome). And Twitter for iPhone obviously doesn’t have built-in support for Facebook. TweetDeck does, but neither support the many other social networks users can easily update with Seesmic for iPhone (again, thanks to Ping.fm integration). Granted, you can use dedicated apps for Facebook, Tumblr, etc., but for basic usage it’s simply a huge time-saver to be able to do all that from a single app. Seesmic for iPhone also lets you save important messages and updates by storing them to Evernote in one tap, which is a very nice added bonus. All this basically means Seesmic for iPhone is a worthy competitor to all the other apps when it comes to managing and updating your Twitter account, but definitely outshines both in terms of support for multiple social networking and other services – which makes Seesmic for iPhone stand on its own two feet as a very potent social hub rather than a mere ‘Twitter client’. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 21 May 2010 | 3:25 am Internet blockade in Pakistan continues - The Associated Press
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 21 May 2010 | 3:21 am Developers welcome Android 2.2 - Inquirer
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 21 May 2010 | 3:11 am Gourmet Burger Delivery - Builtburger Lets You Customize Deliciousness Direct to Your Door(TrendHunter.com) BuiltBurger is an Internet company that allows you to order restaurant-quality delicious hamburgers and have them shipped to your door. All you have to do is wait for it. These BuiltBurger...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 May 2010 | 3:10 am Internet blockade in Pakistan continues (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 21 May 2010 | 3:01 am Queen's School of Business: Jeremy Gutsche Profiled(TrendHunter.com) As the founder of TrendHunter.com and author of EXPLOITING CHAOS, Jeremy Gutsche's participation in Queen's Accelerated MBA for Business Graduates program has helped lead him to the...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 May 2010 | 3:00 am Shuttle, Station Pass By The SunFrench astrophotographer Thierry Legault caught a stunning view of shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station (ISS) passing in front of the sun about 50 minutes before docking.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 21 May 2010 | 2:53 am Expanded hospital opens at Calif. aquariumThe Aquarium of the Pacific is opening a brand new animal hospital that will be able to treat all sorts of sea creatures, from baby sea horses that weigh less than a gram to California sea...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 May 2010 | 2:50 am Converting Baby Cups - The Weil Baby Tritan Bottles Offer Toxin-Free Training (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) When it comes to your baby, only the best is acceptable, and these Weil Baby Tritan Bottles may be just what the doctored ordered--especially since they were created by a doctor. Created...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 May 2010 | 2:47 am Sci-Fi Supperware - Make the Your Dinners Out of this World with the X Aperitivio Collection (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) I know exactly what your dinner parties have been missing, spaceships! The X Aperitivio collection houses a truly phenomenal design that may have you thinking you're eating your entrees...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 May 2010 | 2:30 am King Tut Rec Rooms - The Pharaoh Game Room Sets Help You Live Like a King (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) These Pharaoh game room sets are perhaps the ultimate in luxury. Who better to imitate then the originators of over-the-top lifestyle? I mean, the Egyptians had servants buried with...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 May 2010 | 2:18 am Sony, Samsung meeting seen focusing on LCD panelsTOKYO/SEOUL (Reuters) - A meeting on Monday between the top brass of Samsung Electronics Co and Sony Corp will likely focus on further cooperation in LCD panels, with the Japanese...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 May 2010 | 2:16 am Aired-Out iPhone Wallets - Incase Gives Your iPhone a Breather With the Perforated iPhone Case (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The Incase Perforated iPhone Case gives your iPhone a stylish look while keeping it from heating up. With a net-like design, these iPhone cases come in different bright and bold colors,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 May 2010 | 2:05 am Astronauts gear up for 3rd and final spacewalkThe Atlantis astronauts have one more big job before leaving the International Space Station. On Friday morning, two of the crew will venture out on the third and final spacewalk of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 May 2010 | 2:00 am IBM Business Analytics Helps Nottingham Building Society Improve Customer Service and EfficienciesLONDON, May 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Nottingham Building Society, one of the largest regional building societies providing financial services in the UK, has improved customer service and efficiencies through reduced paper waste with the help of IBM business analytics.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 21 May 2010 | 2:00 am IBM Business Analytics Helps Nottingham Building Society Improve Customer Service and EfficienciesSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 May 2010 | 2:00 am Greyson Chance, 12-year-old YouTube and Twitter Superstar: How He Really Happened [Voices]By Simon Dumenco, The Media Guy, Advertising Age First, take a look at the Trendrr chart above. Note that Greyson — Greyson Michael Chance, a 12-year-old Oklahoma boy whose parents blessed him with an awesomely Twitter-ready, SEO-friendly first name — has lately had more Twitter buzz than Jonas Brothers and Lady Gaga. On Monday, a peak of 2,530 tweets name-checked him in one hour (vs. Jonas Bros.’ recent one-hour peak of 902 tweets, and Gaga’s 373). Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 21 May 2010 | 1:52 am Memory-Aiding Trinkets - The Charming Reminder Lets You Know What's on the Docket Today (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) If you're like me and that white bow around your finger is just not doing the trick, I suggest you get yourself this Charming Reminder. This charm bracelet changes day to day depending...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 May 2010 | 1:52 am Sensor & RFID Apps of the Future, Part 1At the recent ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit, I convened a session about emerging mobile applications for sensors and other Internet of Things technologies. It ended up being a lively discussion on the possibilities...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 May 2010 | 1:50 am Investor Dave McClure: ‘Open is For Losers’ [Voices]By Anthony Ha, Writer, VentureBeat A group of investors argued heatedly about the value of open versus closed technology on a panel today at Google’s (GOOG) I/O conference in San Francisco. Dave McClure, who oversees the seed investing program at Founders Fund, kicked things off with a provocative statement: “Open is for losers.” McClure was answering a question from moderator Dick Costolo of Twitter, who noted that one of the big values celebrated in the tech community is openness, yet one of the hottest platforms, the iPhone, is completely controlled by Apple (AAPL). Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 21 May 2010 | 1:47 am New Google Cloud Storage Service Points To Vendor Lock-In ProblemsGoogle's announcement to offer cloud-based storage is in many respects an exciting development but it also illuminates the lock-in issue and why many an enterprise is reticent about adopting cloud computing...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 May 2010 | 1:45 am Pakistan anger grows at Facebook caricatures (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 21 May 2010 | 1:43 am New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It [Voices]By The Onion While millions of young, tech-savvy professionals already use services like Facebook and Twitter to keep in constant touch with friends, a new social networking platform called Foursquare has recently taken the oh, fucking hell, can’t some other desperate news outlet cover this crap instead? Launched last year, Foursquare is unique in that it not only allows users to broadcast their whereabouts, but also offers a number of built-in incentives, including some innovative new crap The New York Times surely has a throbbing hard-on for. In fact, why don’t we just let them report on this garbage and call it a day? Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 21 May 2010 | 1:41 am Change Your Facebook Settings to "Friends Only" By Pushing Just One Button -- New Web App From Two Linden Lab VetsGiven all the recent controversy over Facebook privacy policies, and the confusing tangle of 50 options you need to navigate, to manage your privacy on the social network, the One Button Rule probably...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 May 2010 | 1:40 am How Newspapers Lost Their Mojo [Voices]By Damon Kiesow, Contributor, Mobile Media, Poynter Online Chuck Myron thinks newspapers might have lost their mojo. The last time he saw it was in 2006 somewhere around Fort Myers, Fla. That was the year Gannett (GCI) began field-testing their mobile journalism project at a handful of papers around the country. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 21 May 2010 | 1:37 am Yahoo To Throw A Hail Mary To Nokia — But The Football Will Be Tied To A Brick
According to Kara Swisher’s sources, Yahoo will be announcing a deal with Nokia that will build Yahoo email, search, and other applications into their devices. At first glance, this is a very big deal. Nokia, after all, is still by far the largest mobile phone maker in the world. Recent reports give Nokia a 37.4% share of the global market (in Q1 2010). That’s far ahead of number 2, Samsung, which has about 20%. Where’s the much-talked-about Apple on that list? Number six, with 3%. So this is huge right? Well, maybe short-term. But long-term this is Yahoo betting on the past, rather than on the future. Simply put: the future is smartphones. Nokia, while it may dominate the overall market, is a smaller player in smartphones. Instead, they dominate in feature phones — you know the phones that people still mainly use to do things like make phones calls and send text messages. For now, thanks to the evolving markets in third-world countries, this remains a strong segment. But there’s indications that this could change sooner than some expect. At Google I/O today, a number of questions at the press event following the keynote asked about Android phone reach in various countries. GigaOm’s Om Malik asked Andy Rubin why Android wasn’t focusing on emerging markets such as India, where feature phones rule? Rubin’s response was that they made a firm decision to bet on smartphones. “Today’s smartphone is tomorrow’s feature phone,” Rubin said. He said that Moore’s Law dictates that all phones will evolve quickly, and within the next 12 months, smartphones will be the devices making waves in the developing world. He went further. He said that those with “legacy positions” (a thinly-veiled reference to companies like Nokia) see it differently, but that the tide will shift — with or without them. This project between Yahoo and Nokia has apparently been called “Project Nike” — after the Greek goddess of victory. In terms of nicknames, it’s hard to think of one more pretentious than that. Swisher also notes that at one point, Nokia and Yahoo were talking about a co-branded phone, but that’s apparently now off the table. That’s probably a good thing, as that wouldn’t have worked either and would have just cost both sides more money and time. The point is, without a major shift in Nokia’s strategy, this is a short-term grab by Yahoo. It’s seems like a smart play for now, but in a year or two years, this may look like yet another failed idea. Mobile, at times, has been one of Yahoo’s few bright spots in the past several years. But again, a deal like this is not about the future, it’s about the present. Meanwhile, Yahoo’s rivals, are thinking the opposite way. It’s hard to come up with anything shown at Google I/O today that wasn’t about the future. The future is what sells. It wins every time.      
Source: TechCrunch | 21 May 2010 | 1:34 am Parents Group on TV Show: What the @#$%! [Voices]By David Bauder, Contributor, Salon A parents group is threatening CBS affiliates with challenges to their broadcast licenses if they air the network’s new comedy with a title that alludes to an obscenity. The Parents Television Council, which monitors decency issues, criticized CBS for picking up a comedy series called “(Bleep) My Dad Says” that is based on a popular Twitter feed. Instead of the word, the CBS title uses a series of symbols. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 21 May 2010 | 1:27 am LDK Solar to Present at the Credit Suisse Future of Energy Conference 2010Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 May 2010 | 1:15 am TABLE-Moresco -6-month group forecastCONSOLIDATED EARNINGS ESTIMATES (in billions of yen unless specified)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 May 2010 | 1:00 am TABLE-Moresco -2010/11 group forecastCONSOLIDATED EARNINGS ESTIMATES (in billions of yen unless specified)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 May 2010 | 1:00 am TABLE-Moresco -6-month parent forecastPARENT-ONLY EARNINGS ESTIMATES (in billions of yen unless specified)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 May 2010 | 1:00 am TABLE-Moresco -2010/11 parent forecastPARENT-ONLY EARNINGS ESTIMATES (in billions of yen unless specified)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 May 2010 | 1:00 am Venter: Artificial living cell will benefit humanity - BBC News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 21 May 2010 | 12:59 am Google Outlines Feature Set For Android 2.2evdotorrey writes "Google announced new features and improvements for Android 2.2. New features include Flash and HTML 5 support, faster browser performance using the V8 engine, Microsoft Exchange support, a Portable Hotspot feature that makes your phone a Wi-Fi hotspot, and many more exciting features." An anonymous reader adds some more on the new release, codenamed Froyo: "Google claims the operating system will be from two to five times faster thanks to advances made in the compilers and the Dalvik virtual machine it uses, and how it is ported to new processors and platforms. On the enterprise front the new operating system comes with full support for Microsoft Exchange, including access to the global address book and the ability to translate native security features to mobile handsets. APIs have also been added to allow controls such as the automatic wiping of missing handsets and other remote management features. Google is also making its voice translation and search APIs open to developers, and showed off an application developed for the handset that allowed real time translation from English to French."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 21 May 2010 | 12:50 am Shell: Detects fire at its Australia refineryPERTH, May 21 (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell has detected a fire at the bitumen processing unit of its Geelong refinery in Australia, it said on Friday.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 May 2010 | 12:44 am Exclusive: Yahoo Poised to Unveil "Project Nike" Partnership Deal With Nokia at Monday Event [BoomTown]
Today, Yahoo sent out a invite for a press conference in New York on Monday with mysterioso tone: It read, vaguely: “Please join Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz for an exciting announcement about providing global consumers with rich online and mobile experiences, and bringing forward a new era in keeping consumers connected.” That’s all it took to get BoomTown on the horn to find out what that meant. And, according to sources, that will be a deal with Finland-based mobile phone giant Nokia (NOK) to build Yahoo (YHOO) email, search and other applications and services into a range of its devices. While the pair had once discussed Nokia making a Yahoo-centric phone, sources said that is unlikely to be part of this deal. Such a partnership–codenamed “Project Nike,” after the Greek goddess of victory and not the sneaker–has been batted around for many years between the companies, without result, even as has Google (GOOG) and Apple (AAPL) have grabbed the spotlight and business in the exploding smartphone market. Yahoo has had a range on various mobile initiatives and has had many, mostly failed, partnerships with carriers and telecom makers. But without its own phone or mobile operating system, such as Google’s Android, the Internet giant is essentially no where in what has become the most important digital sector today. Nokia, which makes more mobile devices–mostly “feature” and not smartphones–than any other company, too has struggled to keep up the lightning fast pace of innovation and has been looking for ways to compete as the landscape shifts dramatically. That’s why the long-festering deal was placed again on the fast track, especially by Bartz, who has put a lot of emphasis of late on showing Yahoo to be more relevant and cutting edge. Thus, the Nokia deal is likely to be a splashy centerpiece of next week’s investor day on Wednesday in Silicon Valley, which will feature Bartz and her senior management, including Americas EVP Hilary Schneider. Schneider has played a lead role in the Nokia deal, which sources said closed two to three weeks ago. Bartz will also be appearing at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York next week, a speaker addition that will be announced soon, where she is likely to discuss the deal. Yahoo has been on a bit of a deal tear of late, purchasing social publishing start-up Associated Content for $90 million earlier this week. And while the Nokia deal will likely garner a lot of attention when announced, execution will–as usual–be key in determining if this will work, especially since both companies are now in a much weaker position. “Recently, Nokia has offered devices that people don’t want and Yahoo has launched mobile services that they don’t want,” said one person familiar with the talks. “Perhaps in working together, they will find a way to finally create some value.” Yahoo declined to comment and Nokia has not responded to an email I sent tonight. Source: All Things Digital | 21 May 2010 | 12:38 am Ten Million iPads a Year? Not So Silly - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 May 2010 | 11:39 pm Gundam Calling t-shirt
From Chop Shop comes this fantastic "Gundam Calling" t-shirt playing on the Clash's London Calling album cover which itself was a tribute to the design of Elvis's self-titled first album. Available in men's and women's sizes from the Boing Boing Bazaar! "robotRock (or Gundam Calling) Tshirt"  Source: Boing Boing | 20 May 2010 | 11:08 pm WSJ: Facebook, MySpace & Others Share Identifying User Data With Advertisers
The Journal article doesn’t get into too much technical detail, but it sounds like Facebook and the others are failing to scrub ‘referring’ URLs that are always passed along whenever a user clicks a link. This is actually normal behavior — typically when you click a link on a website, the site you’re being directed to will get to see where you came from. The issue is that these social sites include some identifying information as part of their URLs; when you visit a friend’s Facebook profile, the resulting URL might include both your friend’s username and your Facebook ID, which could be used to associate you with the ads you’re clicking on. Update: Jessica Vascellaro, one of the writers on the WSJ article, has sent ReadWriteWeb more technical details on what Facebook was doing. Her explanation, in part (you can see the full thing here):
That said, the Journal reports that the ad companies it contacted had not used the data:
However, the article doesn’t say that all ad networks that placed ads on Facebook were ignoring the data. We’ve reached out to Facebook to ask if it’s possible that smaller networks could have leveraged it. The WSJ article notes that the discovery was pointed out back in August by researchers from AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic Institute, but that the issue has persisted until this morning (Facebook and MySpace have now “rewritten some of the offending computer code”). Update: The Twitter issue mentioned in the WSJ seems to be much less of an problem (it doesn’t even have ads yet). Image via alancleaver      
Source: TechCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 11:00 pm Facebook, MySpace Confront Privacy Loophole [Voices]By Emily Steel and Jessica E. Vascellaro, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal Facebook, MySpace and several other social-networking sites have been sending data to advertising companies that could be used to find consumers’ names and other personal details, despite promises they don’t share such information without consent. The practice, which most of the companies defended, sends user names or ID numbers tied to personal profiles being viewed when users click on ads. After questions were raised by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and MySpace moved to make changes. By Thursday morning Facebook had rewritten some of the offending computer code. Advertising companies are receiving information that could be used to look up individual profiles, which, depending on the site and the information a user has made public, include such things as a person’s real name, age, hometown and occupation. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 20 May 2010 | 10:58 pm JHEREG license plate More scenes from a book tour: Steven Brust's kick-ass JHEREG license-plate, on proud display at BookPeople tonight in Austin (so awesome to see so many happy mutants there tonight!). There's still plenty of schools, libraries, shelters and other worthy institutions hoping you'll donate a copy of For the Win to them! Next stop is Raleigh, NC, with a reading and signing at the Barnes and Noble in Cary on Saturday the 23d at 4PM. After that, it's Chapel Hill, NYC, Brooklyn and Toronto. Source: Boing Boing | 20 May 2010 | 10:47 pm Google’s Gundotra Goes After Apple: The Video
At Thursday’s Google I/O keynote, VP of engineering Vic Gundotra repeatedly ripped into Apple, and he did it right off the bat. The video above, which just came out, shows the first ten minutes of his keynote where he discusses why the world needs Android. But that is not the interesting part. The interesting part is where he goes after Apple in a not too subtle way. He extols the virtues of an open platform and contrasts it with a “Draconian future, a future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice.” Then he shows a poster of 1984, with the title, “Not The Future We Want.” The reference is to Apple and the iPhone. Gundotra uses Apple’s own iconic 1984 imagery against it to great effect right at about 3 minutes into the video clip. I can’t wait for Gundotra to appear next week at TechCrunch Disrupt, where we can ask him why he thinks Android will prevail, not only phones but also now in TVs.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 10:37 pm Tesla's death-mask This death mask of Nikola Tesla is on display at a museum in Belgrade, Serbia. Does anyone know if you can have a death mask cast if you're also an organ donor? Does cornea, etc, harvesting interfere with the mask-making? Because I'm an organ donor, but man, I'd love to leave behind one of these babies. Check out Nikola Tesla's super creepy death mask (via JWZ) Source: Boing Boing | 20 May 2010 | 10:11 pm UK government promises immediate, sweeping, pro-liberty reformBritain's new (and unprecedented) coalition government has promised a set of sweeping, immediate pro-liberty changes including a reduction in the use of CCTV surveillance, an end to the national ID card programme, reform libel law, end pointless data-retention and a commit to using free/open source software in large government IT projects.* We will scrap the ID card scheme, the National Identity register and the ContactPoint database, and halt the next generation of biometric passports.The LibDems have also promised to reform the dread Digital Economy Act, consistent with Bridget Fox's Freedom, Creativity and the Internet motion at the Spring Conference this year. New UK govt to curb CCTV, scrap ID cards, help open source
Unified Policy Statement (PDF)
Electric fireflies Tom Padula's solar-powered electric fireflies are just one example of the kind of awesome homebrew tchotchke coming to the San Francisco Maker Faire this weekend. These things sound great: tinsy, solar-charged intermittent garden-blinkers that give you the fireflies you always wanted. "The slightest breeze moves them around, and the motion combined with the light is mesmerizing," says Padula, who will be selling his digital lightning bugs for $10 apiece at the fifth annual Maker Faire Bay Area, which will be held this coming Saturday and Sunday, May 22 and 23, in San Mateo, California. The annual event, put on by O'Reilly Media, is a celebration of DIY culture, arts and crafts, and will likely draw more than 70,000 attendees, organizers say.Maker Faire Preview: Electronic Fireflies to Light Up Your Backyard Source: Boing Boing | 20 May 2010 | 10:04 pm May 21, 1956: Bikini Is Da BombAnytime atoll: A U.S. hydrogen-bomb test makes these islands famous, giving their name to a beachwear fashion.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 10:00 pm Metafilter users save two Russian girls from sex traffickersA reader writes, "Members of ask.metafilter.com rescue two Russian girls from probable sex traffickers in NYC, in real time. You have to read through it to believe it."My friend and former student K arrived in DC yesterday, along with a friend. She came over on some kind of travel exchange program put together by a Russian travel agency called 'Aloha'. They paid about 3K for this program.Help me help my friend in DC. Source: Boing Boing | 20 May 2010 | 9:58 pm Turtle Uses Tongue to Breathe UnderwaterThe common musk turtle's tongue has been discovered to serve an unusual purpose: breathing underwater.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 9:48 pm Google's Streetview Privacy Snafu Prompts LawsuitshmG writes "Google's secret data collection has prompted a class-action lawsuit that could force the company to pay up to $10,000 for each time it recorded data from unprotected hotspots, court documents show. The incident, which the company claims to have been unintentional, has prompted the ire of governments and privacy groups around the world. Google collected information that could be used to identify users, including 'the user's unique or chosen Wi-Fi network name, the unique number given to the user's hardware ... [and] data consisting of all or part of any documents, e-mails, video, audio, and VoIP information being sent over the network by the user,' the suit stated."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 20 May 2010 | 9:48 pm Does Google Have Wi-Fi Data from Your Company? (PC World)PC World - Google is facing scrutiny and investigation around the world following revelations that it has been capturing and archiving wi-fi data collected by its Google Street View vehicles that drive around capturing the image data used by the Street View service. It is questionable whether Google should have done that, but what is not questionable is whether or not Google should have any data from your wi-fi network.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 May 2010 | 9:45 pm Apple Wins Ground in Fight Over Flash - Wall Street Journal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 May 2010 | 9:36 pm The Whaling Deal: It's All in the NumbersA proposed "deal" to lower catch limits for whaling countries rings hollow upon close inspection.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 8:58 pm You had me at, "Free fainting goats"My husband is so lucky that we no longer live in Birmingham, AL. If we did, I would totally have one of these free fainting goats in my backyard right. now. Second thought: I wonder what's wrong with them. Can you kick a fainting goat's tires? Source: Boing Boing | 20 May 2010 | 8:54 pm Don’t get caught drinking pop without a mustache ever again!
Now there are green ones, too. Haven’t seen that before. And yeah, I say “pop.” That going to be a problem?
Source: CrunchGear | 20 May 2010 | 8:48 pm BP Disaster: Oil reaches Louisiana marshlands
Photo from Louisiana Gov. Jindal's tour of the environmental devastation in coastal marshlands caused by the BP oil disaster. As a friend said, this thing isn't a "spill," it's a fossil-fuel Chernobyl, unfolding in slow motion, thousands of gallons a day. (Louisiana Gov.'s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, via Clayton Cubitt) Google I/O Day 2: Google announces acquisition of Simplify MediaSection: Communications, Smartphones, Web, Google
Today, during the second day Google I/O keynote, we found out that Simplify Media was, in fact, acquired by Google. The service will be used as part of Android to offer music streaming. Coming presumably with Android 2.2 will be the ability to stream all the music from your computer straight to your Android device, making it unnecessary for users to load their entire library to their devices like the iPhone. The service will be able to stream all non-DRM songs to your device. However, the bit-rate was not mentioned. Presumably it will vary with the connection speed on your device. Not only does this take a shot at Apple in how music is handled on the iPhone, but also to music streaming services like MOG and Spotify. Unlike Pandora and Slacker, MOG and Spotify allow you to select specific songs to stream to your device, and each offer high bit-rates for their paid services. However, if users can just stream their entire media library for free, what would make them want to use those services? Although, using Google’s streaming would also be a problem for those who use a laptop as a main computer and take it with them while still wanting to listen their music library on the phone without taking up space on the SD card. Maybe Apple could have a better way fo streaming music to a smartphone next month. Read [ReadWriteWeb] Read [Simplify Media] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 May 2010 | 8:45 pm Meeting Space Booking Site eVenues Wins The Funded’s Founder Showcase
eVenues aggregates, searches, and rents meeting event space by the hour or day. It’s sort of like Expedia but for meeting spaces. The service is designed to help small businesses and organizations like art galleries, city and county governments, and non-profits, find affordable space. SnapShop, an augmented reality shopping app that places furniture from catalogs in your home, was the official Runner-Up in the showcase. David Jennings, Co-Founder of eVenues, won a cash prize, Startup Alley tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt, and free legal advice from Cooley by gathering the most votes from the crowd and judge panel, which included George Zachary, Rebecca Lynn, Jeff Clavier, Phil Libin and Facebook’s Bubba Murarka. The Funded’s Founder Institute just announced the graduation of 25 companies from the incubator’s East Coast outposts and launched in Boston. Announced in March 2009, the Founder Institute offers entrepreneurs and very early stage startups an environment designed to help foster their growth and education. The program, which is now active in ten cities worldwide, holds two four-month long sessions annually in each location, which include mentorship sessions from experienced tech entrepreneurs.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 8:30 pm Space OdditiesMary Roach - one of my favorite science writers - has a book coming out this August. It's sort of like "The Right Stuff." But it's more like the weird stuff. The funny stuff. The gross stuff. The unexpected stuff. It's called "Packing for Mars," and it's all about those things NASA doesn't delve into at press conferences: boozing in space, sex in space, peeing in space, etc. Mary - whom you might know from her book about cadavers (Stiff) or her book about life after death (Spook) or her book about bonking (Bonk) -- sent me an early copy for blurbage purposes. Here's the five most important space nuggets I gleaned: --The Japanese space program has an interesting way of screening candidates: Extreme origami. Potential astronauts have to make 1,000 paper cranes to see how they deal with pressure and monotony. --Among the historic trash left on the moon by the first human visitors: Four condom-like urine collection devices. Two were left by Neil Armstrong and two were left by Buzz Aldrin. By the way, two were large and two were small. "Who wore what is a matter of conjecture," says Roach. --Booze is officially banned in space. But some astronauts have managed to smuggle it on. According to Roach's sources, vodka is very useful when trying to get Russian astronauts to cooperate on projects. --Space makes you beautiful. It's known as the Space Beauty Treatment. "Without gravity, your hair has more body. Your breasts don't sag. More of your body fluid migrates to your head and plumps your crow's feet." --A flight surgeon once advised Apollo astroanuts to "self-stim" to prevent prostate infections. Unsurprisingly, today's NASA has no official policy on orbital masturbation. But a Russian cosmonaut Roach interviewed was willing to discuss the issue. "My friend asks me, 'How are you making sex in space?' I say, 'By hand!'"
Source: Boing Boing | 20 May 2010 | 8:24 pm HTC EVO 4G: A Multimedia Powerhouse - Washington Post
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 May 2010 | 8:23 pm Anybot Robots will substitute you at the officeSection: Gadgets / Other, Robots/AI  Anybots’ has created a QB mobile telepresence robot which will can be your avatar for office environments. That means you can sit back at home while having a conference meeting with co-workers. The robot will show a live view of your face to your audience while you’ll be able to see whatever it sees. The robot comes equipped with: 5.0 megapixel video camera (also photos), 320 x 240 LCD screen, an eight hour battery life and Wi-Fi capability. Not the most impressive credentials as consumers will be looking at a price tag of $15,000 for one of these guys. Considering the price, I feel as though it would be more sensible to stick a netbook on wheels and have it constantly running Skype.
According to Christopher, these things aren’t supposed to replace video conferencing but rather serve as a way to keep an eye on employees remotely. In addition, anyone can long into these robots through a web browser and control their movement with the simple push of the direction keys. For the price they’re asking, this won’t be anything more than a novelty. Via [Wired] Full Story » | Written by Tarun Kunwar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 May 2010 | 8:01 pm Google Just Shot Cable’s Franz Ferdinand
Against Apple? Yes, to some extent. Against set-top boxes? In a way. But primarily, I think it’s against the TV providers. Not in a direct way: as many have noted, Google TV, being a delivery system, relies entirely on others for its content. No, Google is leaning on Comcast and DirecTV and all them indirectly. Like the music industry and Napster, or the mobile phone industry and the iPhone, it’s less a direct assault and more an ultimatum: “Change or die.”      
Source: TechCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 7:43 pm Google just shot cable’s Franz Ferdinand
Let’s just address the Apple and set-top box issues first. Is Google sucker-punching Apple? Kind of — with the Froyo announcement, they clearly have Cupertino in their sights. But Apple TV isn’t really a vital target. When was the last time you saw one? Does anyone know what it even does? There are external hard drives with more functionality. Google’s not attacking them, but it may be attacking the iTunes hegemony. Google TV will be pulling its shows from the your cable or from web sources, whichever is more convenient. I guarantee they’re going to make it unbelievably easy — easier than iTunes — to watch, buy, and so on. But iTunes is dug in and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Google can bide their time there — and flank them. As for set-top boxes: it’s unclear just how much functionality the Logitech hardware will have, and whether Google TV will allow for mods and apps that provide Popcorn Hour or Boxee-level media management. Boxee has said they see Google TV as complementary rather than competition, but that kind of soft-pedaling is expected on announcement day. Set-top boxes, DVRs, and in-TV web stuff is a real muddle right now; the average TV buyer will almost certainly be bewildered by the options and mystified by the arbitrary limitations. Think of Google TV as being for TVs what Google Maps is for location. There’s a lot of stuff you can do with it, but they don’t do nearly everything themselves: they provide a foundation. I’m thinking (hoping) that Google TV will be similar. There’s more to ask when it comes to home theater PCs: are HTPCs, like Brontosaurus, simply too big to live? I suspect they’ll remain as the hardcore collector’s delivery method of choice. Offline, as hi-def as you want, and under your control. They just won’t be big time.
So it’s a holding action against Apple and an encouraging shoulder-punch to the set-top box community. What’s the main objective? Force the cable and satellite giants’ hands. The providers have fought channels a la carte and other seemingly obvious advances in TV-watching for years now because they’re a threat to the 20-year-old money tree called basic cable. They’ve been dragging their feet for a decade, adding internet functionality piece by piece, but now that Google has thrown their hat into the ring, they have to get serious. They may have inertia, but Google has momentum. But don’t get any romantic notions about this being a David versus Goliath moment. This is just New and Improved Goliath versus Goliath Classic. Not that Google TV is going to be any great shakes when it actually hits. TVs are already semi-web-connected, and competitors like Yahoo! have plenty of time to craft a credible competitor. Google will just be another brand for a while, but like Android, it will be cheap and plentiful, and always improving. Whenever anyone leaves Yahoo’s system or Vizio’s built-in web widgets, they’ll go to Google, the way feature phone upgraders and WinMo refugees are adopting Android in herds. Like other Google products, it’ll launch incomplete and pick up steam as it goes. So why is it a threat to cable providers? Simple. Who wants to pay for two pipes? When I went to Comcast’s site to browse for alternative services, the option of getting internet through them was frustratingly obscured behind package deals and cable TV. What if I don’t want TV? Unpossible! Customers are led to believe that there are two distinct pipes running side by side into their house: TV and internet. Sure, that once was the case (and may still be in some areas, admittedly (though not for long)), but it sure as hell isn’t any more, and Comcast is terrified that the subscribing population at large will find out. That’s why they don’t want to give out a la carte: in order to offer options, you must first admit that options exist. If it were up to them, we’d all buy one magical pipe that gives us 100 channels (say for $60) and another pipe that gives us high-speed internet ($50), and never know that in fact, it’s all a big stream of 1s and 0s coming from the big digital content provider in the sky. Furthermore, the traditional advertising models, pretty much set down in the early days of radio (content, more content after these messages, ads, more content) are all kinds of fun to cling to. I don’t blame them. A million dollars for 30 viewer seconds that will probably be skipped past? Sure, sign here, and we have a nice bridge for sale, too. DVRs (and eventually Hulu) have done some damage to this concept, but it’s easier for people to think of them as magic VCRs with a tape you never have to rewind. By taking the familiar Google concepts and brands traditionally associated with the internet and putting them on your TV, practically unaltered, Google is rubbing the viewer’s nose in it: It’s all data! Can’t you see?! Data coming through the pipe! Don’t be a fool!
It takes a certain confluence of circumstances to make a new technology or delivery method seem legit to consumers, even though the tech may have been around for years. AOL legitimized “the internet.” iTunes legitimized digital media downloads (Apple is good at this; they’ve legitimized several things). Google is in the process of legitimizing internet-connected TV, even though Yahoo and Samsung and all the others have been kicking it around for a year and a half now. They were doing it at their own rate. Now they’ll have to do it at Google’s rate. But we already have weather widgets and on-demand and Boxee and TiVo! Yeah, and we already had Nomads and ball mice and candy bar phones — until we had something else. Google’s taking an extant concept and making it simpler and better, or so we hope — it’s kind of what they do. Unfortunately for cable providers, that concept is analogous to net neutrality in your TV — let’s call it “pipe parity,” in which viewers know that it’s all just data coming from some datacenter somewhere and being turned into video by a box in their home. The more prevalent Google TV and nascent pipe parity is (having it in Sony TVs is, no doubt, only the beginning), the more cable and satellite providers will have to provide for it. As the insensibility of their double-dipping becomes more and more evident to viewers, they’ll have to accommodate, though it’ll be a while before any serious changes take place. Satellite, for instance, may not have much of a place in the hierarchy in a couple years outside of getting content to the savage prairies where cable hath spread not its high-bandwidth tentacles.
It’ll take some time, and I’m guessing there are things Google isn’t telling us. Other big players like Netflix, iTunes, TiVo, and so on will have a say in the new order — no sense pretending they’re going to disappear. But I don’t think this is a lark on Google’s part. Like they said, they want a piece of the 4-billion strong TV market, and they’re going to get it one way or another. What remains to be seen is who will ride shotgun — and who will get thrown under the bus.
Source: CrunchGear | 20 May 2010 | 7:41 pm Google I/O Day 2: Google TV announced, Hulu support not likelySection: Video, Web, Online Music/Video, Google
The first question that was on everyone’s mind was: What about Hulu? During the keynote, Hulu’s bright logo popped up on the screen, giving hope to all potential GoogleTV buyers. But is it realistic to think that Hulu will allow this? Essentially all that Google is doing, is embedding the video content into their own player, which Hulu could very easily block like they have in Android phones, Boxee, and other players. The only hope for Hulu on the new GoogleTV is if Google can work out a deal with Hulu for licensing to the content. It really is a cool product that I plan on checking out myself. But, if Hulu can’t make it to the lineup of services, I have a feeling demand for the product will drop considerably. Read [Mashable ] and [Engadget]
Full Story » | Written by Hunter Clarke for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 May 2010 | 7:38 pm Sourcing Industry Leaders Come Together to Discuss Strategies for GrowthBOSTON, May 20 /PRNewswire/ -- TPI, the largest sourcing data and advisory firm in the world and a unit of Information Services Group, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 May 2010 | 7:35 pm Is the Next Prius Going To Be A Tesla?
Calling it an “explosion” for California (I think he meant this in the positive sense, not the Terminator sense) Schwarzenegger framed it as a victory for California’s environmental agenda and the economy. He predicts it will create 1,000 jobs for the state’s embattled economy.
Source: CrunchGear | 20 May 2010 | 7:11 pm How to: Make a Pokewalker fashionableFROM GAMERTELL - If you’re wondering how to look more stylish while using your Pokewalker, the pedometer peripheral that came with the DS games Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver, check out Gamertell’s Pokewalker fashion dos and don’ts. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 May 2010 | 6:58 pm New Logo/Name, Same Result. Twitter Dominates The App Store
Twitter for iPhone, of course, is the new name for Tweetie, the app made by the company Atebits (really, Loren Brichter) until they were acquired by Twitter in April. While Tweetie itself was already extremely popular (that tends to happen when you make the best-of-class app), its popularity is bound to hit a whole different level now. First of all, the app used to cost $2.99, but Twitter decided to make it free. Perhaps more importantly though, the new branding — simply “Twitter” in the App Store — makes it much more visible to the masses looking for the best Twitter app through search. And that’s exactly why Twitter made the purchase — they needed a way to further their brand on mobile clients, so users weren’t confused, and got the best experience. On BlackBerry and Android phones, they built their own apps from scratch. But they likely realized it would be hard to top Tweetie, so they just bought it. Smart move. The app itself remains the best Twitter client for the iPhone. There are a few small changes here and there, such as more emphasis on the new-style Retweets, which some people still seem to hate despite seemingly huge adoption. Search is better, the app seems faster overall, and again, the price is now 100% better. The biggest complaint people seem to have is about the new icon. But I, for one, kind of like it. It makes a lot more sense from a branding perspective than the old chat bubble. Perhaps Apple giving Twitter the App of the Week was to make up for their odd half-roll out of the app a few days ago. The app was showing up in users’ app update area, but you couldn’t click on it for over a day. Or maybe they just love the app. Either way, it’s going to get a ton of downloads. It already is. As a somewhat related side note, Apple is also featuring Square as the iPad App of the Week. Square is the mobile payment company started by Twitter creator and chairman Jack Dorsey. Apple is also featuring Square on the iPhone side of the store, as well. Now we just need a version of Twitter for the iPad so Apple can feature that too — and to make me happy. You can find Twitter for iPhone here. And Square for iPhone/iPad here.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 6:57 pm Microsoft's New Attempt To Dominate RoboticsAn anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum reports that Microsoft's Robotics Group is announcing new world domination plans — at least for the robotics world. The company is making its Robotics Developer Studio (RDS), which includes Microsoft's CCR and DSS runtime toolkit, available to anyone for free. Why make it a freebie? Because the company wants to expand its RDS base and get a grip on the robotics development space, hoping big things will come out of it."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 20 May 2010 | 6:50 pm Axl Rose countersues ex-manager for $5 million (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 May 2010 | 6:34 pm Dell fiscal 1Q net income jumps 52 percent (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 May 2010 | 6:27 pm The Human Centipede horror filmThe Human Centipede: First Sequence is a newly-released schlock-horror film about a crazy surgeon who attempts to make a human centipede by sewing people together mouth-to-butt. Roger Ebert refused to apply the star system to it in his review. From the Sun Times: Roger Ebert reviews The Human Centipede (Thanks, Lisa Mumbach!) And here's The Awl's review, "Horror Chick: Do Not See 'The Human Centipede' Unless You Are a Sick, Sick Puppy, And Even Then Reconsider" UPDATE: And the requisite Tumblr blog for this depraved flick, "Behind the Behind," from UPSO and pals. Source: Boing Boing | 20 May 2010 | 6:22 pm Google I/O Day 2: Android 2.2 Froyo announcedSection: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Google
The biggest update we’ll see to Android 2.2 is an big increase of speed. Froyo brings in a just-in-time compiler which will increase the speed of the OS and apps as a whole, which should help prevent the slow down issues. The just-in-time compiler is said to increase speeds by two to five times. There will also be a big speed increase in the web thanks to the V8 javascript engine that is used in Google Chrome being ported into the Android Broswer, which is said to make the Browser two to three times faster than the 2.1 Browser. In the demo, the new V8-equipped literally swam laps around the iPad in a SunSpider javascript test. There are also a variety of updates for Android apps. Android users with 2.2 will finally be able to update all apps with a single tap, or choose to automatically update certain apps. Apps will also be available to download to devices through a new web interface. Unlike iPhone devices, apps will be automatically downloaded to the Android device once buying or choosing them through the Marketplace online. This will also be true for the online music store Google quietly announced will be coming to the Marketplace. Aps will also be able to send link or “Android Intents” through the web straight to devices. For example, when searching on Google Maps, users can send the directions they found on their computer to the phone which will automatically open the Maps app with the directions already open. The biggest new feature to some, given all these improvements, is the option for tethering. Android 2.2 will include the option to tether your phone via USB or WiFi natively. The question remains how carriers will react to the feature, but Google is building it into the OS. Read [Google] Read [Android Developers] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 May 2010 | 6:22 pm Alt Text: Machines and Matrimony Don't MixAs news of the world's first robot-officiated marriage in Japan shocks the AI and robotics communities, some researchers declare cybernuptials are a "pipe dream."
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Car Absorbs CO2; Spews OxygenOne reason treehuggers like myself love trees is that the leaves scrub CO2 from the atmosphere, use it for energy and emit life-giving oxygen, the process of photosynthesis. Wouldn't it be great if cars -- notorious for CO2 emissions -- ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 5:58 pm Archos 7 Home Tablet now available at the official Archos StoreSection: Computers, Mobile Computers  Back in late-April we saw the Archos 7 Home Tablet go up for pre-order with Amazon, and more recently that same device has come available in the official Archos Store. The price remains the same at $199.99, but it appears to be an actual order—as opposed to a pre-order. Anyway, if you were holding out for an Archos 7 Home Tablet with Android, then now is the time to shell out some money. Product [Archos] Via [Liliputing] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 May 2010 | 5:43 pm Is the Next Prius Going To Be A Tesla?
Toyota and Tesla announced a new partnership at Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto today, the auto makers will collaborate on technology, the development of new electric vehicles and Toyota will purchase $50 million of Tesla’s common stock (to be completed after Tesla’s pending IPO). The press conference featured the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tesla CEO, Elon Musk and TMC President, Akio Toyoda. Calling it an “explosion” for California (I think he meant this in the positive sense, not the Terminator sense) Schwarzenegger framed it as a victory for California’s environmental agenda and the economy. He predicts it will create 1,000 jobs for the state’s embattled economy. “Toyota is a company founded on innovation, quality, and commitment to sustainable mobility. It is an honor and a powerful endorsement of our technology that Toyota would choose to invest in and partner with Tesla,” Musk said in a statement. “We look forward to learning and benefiting from Toyota’s legendary engineering manufacturing, and production expertise.” The car companies will collaborate on future EV models, as Tesla move towards more affordable models. Musk told us he hopes to create a car in the $30,000 price range in the next few years (with Toyota’s help)— compare that to the roadster which retails for $100k-plus. Significantly, Tesla announced that it will takeover the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc (NUMMI) plant in Fremont and expects to produce the Model S EV at that location, starting in 2012. The NUMMI, which was formerly a joint venture of Toyota and GM, was shut down in April, leading to the elimination of 4,700 jobs. The hope is that once production truly ramps up for the Model S, Tesla will produce 20,000 EVs from the plant (Musk predicts it will take roughly 12 months, from the beginning of production, to reach this level). The company is currently adding 50 employees per month to keep pace with the expansion that will likely accelerate in the coming months. Over the next few years, he says it’s reasonable to expect Tesla to grow to 2,000 employees, with roughly half of that working in NUMMI. Earlier today, Schwarzenegger unexpectedly announced (at a separate Google event in Mountain View ) that Toyota was partnering with Tesla to build electric cars in California, according to reports. The possibly accidental announcement took some thunder out of Tesla’s 5 p.m. PST press conference. For Toyota, it’s a chance to curry favor in the California and larger US market, for Tesla, the car maker gets Toyota’s technology & resources to help it transition from a highly niche player to a more robust force in the domestic auto market. Succinctly: Tesla wants to be more like Toyota, and Toyota wants to be more like Tesla. Musk says the partnership was borne out of a meeting with Toyoda roughly six weeks ago. Musk offered Toyoda a test drive in a Tesla and Toyoda eagerly took him up on his offer—Musk was impressed by the executive’s bold driving skills (“he drove it like a real sports car”) and Toyoda was impressed by the car. Of course, this is not Tesla’s first partnership with a big automaker. Last year, the company signed a deal with Daimler that gave Daimler a 10% stake and technology in exchange for roughly $50 million, according to reports. Musk said Daimler has been supportive of the new deal and had previously acknowledged that Tesla could use another large partner. Tesla hasn’t had a lot of trouble attracting capital, with investors like Google’s Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Capricorn Management, Compass Technology, JPMorgan— it’s a really long list. Even the US Deparment of Energy threw down a $465 million low-interest loan for Tesla last year. Attracting money is one thing, the real struggle for Tesla has been building on that base. The company has recorded net losses for virtually every previous quarter—investors should expect further losses until Tesla really ramps up production and deliveries of its more affordable Model S sedan. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 5:31 pm Remains of the Day: Pig pile on Apple (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - Geez, it must be pile-on Apple day. Both Sony and Google have taken shots at Cupertino, but at least Apple managed to escape a crazy lawsuit and can rest assured in the knowledge that the iPad business is booming. Here are the remainders for May 20, 2010.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 May 2010 | 5:30 pm Penn. AG Corbett Subpoenas Twitter For Bloggers' NamesDthief writes with this from Pennsylvania's ABC27 News: "The state attorney general's office has issued a subpoena threatening officials of the social networking service Twitter with arrest unless they reveal the names of two bloggers who have been critical of Attorney General Tom Corbett and his public corruption investigation. Vic Walczak of the American Civil Liberties Union told Pittsburgh's WTAE-TV that the court action 'raises grave concerns about abuse of the grand jury process to retaliate against political critics and opponents.' He said Americans 'have a right to criticize government officials and to do so anonymously.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 20 May 2010 | 5:30 pm CrimeReports Names Scott Kinzie as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Product StrategyKinzie to Focus on New Tools to Revolutionize Public Safety DRAPER, Utah, May 20 /PRNewswire/ -- CrimeReports, creators of The National Crime Map, today announced it has signed Scott Kinzie as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Product Strategy.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 May 2010 | 5:24 pm Google, partners hoping people want their Web TV (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 May 2010 | 5:23 pm Maker Faire Preview: Electronic Fireflies to Light Up Your Backyard
Fireflies in a jar are a wonderful childhood memory for many of us. Not surprisingly, it’s one of the things that Tom Padula missed when he moved from the Midwest to Silicon Valley nearly two decades ago. So in the spirit of Silicon Valley, Padula decided to create electronic fireflies: lightweight, inexpensive, solar-powered bugs. At night, the fireflies flash a light on and off for about two hours, then switch off to recharge in the next day’s sunlight. “I built about 20 and hung them in the backyard, on branches and bushes,” says Padula. “Bliss.” About the size of a quarter, the electronic fireflies have a rechargeable battery pack. The batteries are charged each day by six tiny solar cells. At dusk, they come alive with a fading on-and-off pattern.
Padula’s fireflies weigh 0.2 ounces (7 grams) and are attached to an 18-inch monofilament line. Six solar panels charge NiMH batteries, and a microcontroller drives the LED. The units are dipped in epoxy for weather resistance. “All the real work happens in the code, from determining ambient light level, to controlling the LED intensity and keeping track of how long the pattern has been active so as to turn off after two hours, like real fireflies do,” says Padula. Originally, Padula assembled each device by hand but now contracts it to a shop in Nevada. Padula says he initially created the electronic fireflies for his enjoyment but after encouragement from friends and family, he hopes to make a business out of it. See below for a closer look at the firefly.
Photos: Leslie Dunscomb 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 May 2010 | 5:10 pm Electronic Fireflies to Light Up Your BackyardMaker Faire exhibitor Tom Padula has created tiny, solar-powered LED "fireflies" that start blinking when it gets dark.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 5:10 pm Electronic Fireflies to Light Up Your BackyardMaker Faire exhibitor Tom Padula has created tiny, solar-powered LED "fireflies" that start blinking when it gets dark.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 20 May 2010 | 5:10 pm Appeals Court Halts 'Hot News' Publishing OrderA federal appeals court lifts an order that the financial news aggregator delay publication of financial analysts' buy and sell recommendations.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 5:05 pm Best Trilogy Films: The Force Is With 'The Empire Strikes Back'With Star Wars' most excellent episode celebrating its 30th birthday, it's time to ponder the most powerful installments of sci-fi and fantasy movie trilogies — and to wince at the inevitable weak links.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 5:00 pm Intuit 3Q profit jumps 19 percent, boosts outlook (AP)AP - Intuit Inc. on Thursday said its fiscal third-quarter profit jumped 19 percent as more consumers and businesses turned to its tax and accounting software and websites.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 May 2010 | 4:59 pm Sharks Remember Where to Get a Good MealScientists discover that sharks remember the best spots to find meals.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 4:50 pm Google's "Royalty-Free" WebM Video May Not Be Royalty-Free For Long [Digital Daily]
“The world would have a new free format unencumbered by software patents,” the Free Software Foundation enthused in an open letter to Google (GOOG) earlier this year. “Viewers, video creators, free software developers, hardware makers–everyone–would have another way to distribute video without patents, fees, and restrictions.” A new era of Web video without the patent-encumbered formats that have defined the Internet to date. That seems ideal. But like many ideals, it may prove to be unattainable. As a number of observers have already noted VP8 isn’t free from patent liability. And now that Google has open-sourced it as part of WebM, that liability is likely to become an issue. And quickly, too. Indeed, Larry Horn, CEO of MPEG LA, the consortium that controls the AVC/H.264 video standard, tells me that the group is already looking at creating a patent pool license for VP8. Here’s an excerpt from my email exchange with him:
It would seem, then, that VP8 may end up subject to the same licensing issues as H.264. If MPEG LA does create a patent pool license for the standard, the free lunch Google promised yesterday may not be free after all. Google certainly has the market muscle to guarantee broad acceptance of WebM and the VP8 codec–if it’s a royalty-free standard. But what if it’s not truly royalty free? Who’ll foot the bill? And is the company willing to indemnify its partners from patent litigation to push WebM? For what it’s worth, Google seems to believe that it has done its due diligence here and has the necessary patent clearance for VP8. Said Google product manager Mike Jazayeri: “We have done a pretty thorough analysis of VP8 and On2 Technologies (VP8’s developer) prior to the acquisition and since then, and we are very confident with the technology and that’s why we’re open sourcing.” Question is, was that analysis thorough enough? I’ve asked Google for comment on Horn’s remarks and will update here if I’m given one. Source: All Things Digital | 20 May 2010 | 4:49 pm IHG Becomes First Hotel Company to Connect With Guests Using Gowalla's Location-Based Social NetworkATLANTA, May 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In support of the recently launched Hit it Big summer promotion, IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) has turned to popular location-based consumer service, Gowalla, to extend the offer beyond traditional marketing channels and into the mobile space.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 May 2010 | 4:49 pm Benchmark Software For Windows 7 Rollout?tdisalvo writes "We are doing a Windows 7 rollout and I will have to compare major PC vendors. I am looking for vendor-neutral tests that will give me the data I need to present an educated opinion to my CIO. Clear, pretty charts are nice since it is for C level execs, and we need to make it understandable for nontechnical as well as technical people. More specifically, I am looking for something that will clearly show how the same processor performs (better or worse) with a particular build, motherboard, RAM, power supply, etc. My plan is to get very similar machines from major vendors and see which one's build has the highest independent benchmarks. Something with which I could test multiple computers and report on the differences in score would be ideal." As usual, free is an advantage.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 20 May 2010 | 4:48 pm CHINICT: China’s largest tech conference will be livestreaming on TechCrunch
As well as our own exclusive roster of shows, we’re working hard to secure the rights to livecast some of the most interesting and entertaining technology events from around the world. One such event is CHINICT – “the largest conference on China tech innovation & entrepreneurship”, held in Beijing every year. Annoyingly this year’s event falls a few weeks prior to our launch date so you’ll have to wait till next year for full-on TCTV coverage, but in the meantime we’ve convinced the conference’s organisers to allow us to show an uninterrupted feed of this year’s event right here on TechCrunch.com. Fittingly, it kicks off next Thursday; the day after Disrupt ends. With much of the agenda in English – and with speakers including Dave McClure – the event promises to be a fascinating couple of days for Chinese and Valley entrepreneurs alike. More importantly though, the conference reflects the reality that, increasingly, the big technological innovations are happening not in Silicon Valley but in emerging markets like China. Of course none of this will be news if you’ve been following TechCrunch roving editor Sarah Lacy’s travels around the emerging world (see her post here on why China isn’t simply “The Next Silicon Valley”). But just in case you’re still not convinced on the significance of what’s happening outside of the US, I asked CHINICT organiser Franck Nazikian to explain to us why TechCrunch readers’ eyes should be on Beijing on May 27th and 28th. Franck writes…
CHINICT will be held on May 27th & 28th at Crown Plaza Parkview Wuzhou Hotel, and streamed live on TechCrunch.com from 8:30am Beijing time (5:30pm Pacific) on both days. See the complete agenda here – and more background on speakers here.      
Source: TechCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 4:47 pm Android update turns Google phones into Wi-Fi hot spots (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 May 2010 | 4:40 pm PlayOn Premium available for PS3, Wii and Xbox 360FROM GAMERTELL - A new $39.99 PlayOn Premium subscription lets you stream video content from Hulu, Comedy Central and other online channels to your PS3, Wii or Xbox 360. There is also a free PlayOn Lite plan that provides access to Pandora and media on your computer. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 May 2010 | 4:35 pm eLong Reports First Quarter 2010 Unaudited Financial ResultsBEIJING, May 20 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- eLong, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 May 2010 | 4:30 pm Why Overheard Cell Phone Chats Are Annoying__roo writes "American researchers think they have found the answer to the question of why overhearing cell phone chats are annoying. According to scientists at Cornell University, when only half of the conversation is overheard, it drains more attention and concentration than when overhearing two people talking. According to one researcher, 'We have less control to move away our attention from half a conversation (or halfalogue) than when listening to a dialogue. Since halfalogues really are more distracting and you can't tune them out, this could explain why people are irritated.' Their study will be published in the journal Psychological Science."
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Source: Slashdot | 20 May 2010 | 4:26 pm 'Blur' TV Spot Takes Direct Aim at 'Mario Kart'A hilarious new commercial for upcoming racing game Blur says you don't have to play cutesy kart-racing games to have fun.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 4:10 pm Symantec To Buy VeriSign's Authentication BusinessoverThruster writes "Security giant Symantec is taking another step toward global domination of the information security market with the purchase of VeriSign's authentication business. Back in April they purchased PGP Corporation and GuardianEdge. VeriSign is the best known Certificate Authority; they are virtually synonymous with certificates for SSL and PKI. It seems like this could dilute the trust value of their brand rather than enhance it. It is not clear yet what effects this will have on VeriSign customers but the cynic in me says it can't be good. In terms of putting all your eggs in one basket, this will sure make Symantec a juicy target for hackers (as if they weren't already). Imagine you could hack one company and control a large chunk of endpoint security software and the bulk of the Internet's public key infrastructure."
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Source: Slashdot | 20 May 2010 | 4:05 pm T-Mobile releasing the myTouch 3G Slide on June 2Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
With all the new announcements of Android 2.2 and future releases that Google showed off today, T-Mobile has announced a release date for a phone that likely won’t be able to take advantage of all of it. The next in T-Mobile’s myTouch line, the myTouch 3G Slide will be coming to the masses on June 2, just a few days before the EVO 4G. Releasing the phone so close to the EVO 4G isn’t the only mistake made by T-Mobile on the myTouch 3G Slide. The phone wil cost users $180 compared to the $199 of the EVO 4G. That’s after a $50 mail-in rebate, making users pay $230 up front for the phone. The EVO 4G does have a rebate as well, but buying it at Best Buy will make it automatic. That means that those wanting a myTouch 3G Slide will pay $30 than those who will buy the Android phone with the best available specs. The one upside in comparing the myTouch 3G Slide to the EVO 4G is that the contracts will be cheaper for those who want more than 450 or 500 minutes (Sprint and T-Mobile lowest available plans, respectively). The price difference is only $10, though, so if you’re in a 4G area and want to use the EVO 4G as a WiFi hotspot, it’ll be only $20 more with the second plan. The myTouch 3G Slide is meant for those who want physical keyboards and aren’t exactly comfortable with diving right into smartphones, but the pricing still doesn’t make any sense. For the same $180 you can get the Nexus One (while it’s still available online), and for an extra $20 an EVO 4G or even an entry iPhone 3GS (and presumably the next iPhone when it’s announced). T-Mobile needs to think a bit more about how it prices phones compared to other phones on the market. Read [T-Mobile] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 May 2010 | 4:02 pm Who cares about a damn QWERTY remote? Your phone is the only remote you need
Sure, at the beginning, it’ll be more familiar to have a dedicated device for controlling your TV. That’s the way it’s been for a long time. But think about it: is Google going to pass up the opportunity to add such a powerful function to phones? Logitech already has a Harmony app for Android, for god’s sake. The dedicated remote will be giving way shortly to the all-purpose handheld communications device; the new remote is just here to soften the blow for people not ready to make the change. But once they realize they can have one less doodad sitting around needing batteries, I think they’ll come around. I like the Harmony remotes too, but let’s be honest — the convergence thing isn’t going to end well for them. In all likelihood, Logitech will start offering Harmony remotes that run Android! Why not? Anyway, I guarantee that it won’t be long before the whole remote thing hits the bricks.
Source: CrunchGear | 20 May 2010 | 3:53 pm Ex-Hacker Adrian Lamo Institutionalized for Asperger'sAfter police outside a grocery store notice something unusual about the man who once hacked the New York Times, Adrian Lamo spends nine days confined in the mental health unit of a local hospital. When he gets out, he's learned something new about what makes him tick.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 3:46 pm 'Transformers 3' Casting Call: Who Should Replace Megan Fox?With Megan Fox leaving Transformers 3, director Michael Bay needs to find a new athletic and comely actor to jump in as sidekick for star Shia LaBeouf.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 3:45 pm ACLU helping keep Twitter users' IDs secret in Pa. (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 May 2010 | 3:28 pm CenturyLink Shareholders Approve Name ChangeMONROE, La., May 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) announced today that, at the company's annual meeting, shareholders approved changing the company's legal name from CenturyTel, Inc. to CenturyLink, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 May 2010 | 3:23 pm Larry Page on Android battery life: it should last a full daySection: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Google
According to Page, the problem lies in resource heavy apps. Here’s the direct quote from Page:
Eric Schmidt goes on to say that receiving and transmitting data in the background can be a problem as well. Twitter apps would likely be the main cause of background data usage. Between Page and Schmidt, running Twitter apps in the background lead to batteries that last less than a day, which means you’re doing something wrong. The odd part part about this is that for many people running Android, the display is listed as taking the a good percentage of the battery most of the time. Page and Schmidt could be correct in that background apps can take up a lot of battery, and in a way that could prove Steve Jobs correct in the multitasking argument. Maybe Android has the wrong approach to multitasking, letting the apps simply continue running in the background as opposed to the limited background processing even in iPhone OS 4. Or maybe the real answer is the easy processing killing of WebOS card swiping. Read [TechRadar] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 May 2010 | 3:20 pm Western Governors University Launches Online Bachelor's Degree in Sales and Sales ManagementNew Degree Program Includes Two Key Sales Certifications SALT LAKE CITY, May 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Western Governors University's College of Business is now enrolling students for its newest degree program, the B.S. in Sales and Sales Management.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 May 2010 | 3:19 pm House Votes To Expand National DNA Arrest Databasesuraj.sun writes with this excerpt from CNET: "Millions of Americans arrested for but not convicted of crimes will likely have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to a national database, according to a bill approved by the US House of Representatives on Tuesday. By a 357 to 32 vote, the House approved legislation that will pay state governments to require DNA samples, which could mean drawing blood with a needle, from adults 'arrested for' certain serious crimes. Not one Democrat voted against the database measure, which would hand out about $75 million to states that agree to make such testing mandatory. ... But civil libertarians say DNA samples should be required only from people who have been convicted of crimes, and argue that if there is probable cause to believe that someone is involved in a crime, a judge can sign a warrant allowing a blood sample or cheek swab to be forcibly extracted."
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Source: Slashdot | 20 May 2010 | 3:19 pm Broadcom Board of Directors Declares Quarterly DividendIRVINE, Calif., May 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced that it will pay its next quarterly cash dividend of $0.08 per share to holders of the Company's common stock.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 May 2010 | 3:18 pm Pakistan Lifts YouTube Ban, but Keeps Facebook's [Voices]By Tom Wright, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal The Pakistani government lifted a ban on video-sharing website YouTube after the company took down “blasphemous” footage but retained a temporary ban on social-networking site Facebook imposed earlier this week, the country’s telecommunications regulator said Thursday. Access to YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc. (GOOG), was cut earlier in the day but restored after the San Bruno, California-based company had “taken off from their website highly offensive blasphemous footage,” the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said, without specifying what content sparked the ban. Facebook remained blocked after the Lahore High Court ruled on Wednesday that authorities should shut the site down until May 31. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 20 May 2010 | 3:10 pm Carriers Will Be Able To Decide Which Android Phones Have Tethering (And They Can Charge For It)
I asked Hiroshi Lockheimer, who heads up engineering on Android, about the issue and the answer was confusing to say the least. Lockheimer said that Android doesn’t do anything special to tag data that’s being accessed through tethering, though carriers could probably find a way to detect it if they really wanted to. But they probably won’t have to, because Android is making it easy for carriers to either charge extra for, or disable entirely, tethering on the phones they sell. It sounds like these would both require small modifications to the OS. That’s straightforward enough — carriers and OEMs have been molding Android to suit their needs for a while now. But what about phones that feature the “Google Experience”, which is the term used to describe devices that ship with the stock Android OS (Google Experience phones include the Motorola Droid and Nexus One)? Presumably carriers wouldn’t be able to insert their payment switch if the OS is unmodified, which means these phones could potentially get tethering included in their normal data plans. We’ll have to wait to find out — Lockheimer said that the answer isn’t clear yet. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 3:06 pm Finally! A Web + TV Combo That Makes Sense: Jimmy Fallon Livestreams Jimmy Fallon. [MediaMemo]Yes, yes, yes: Google (GOOG) is the latest company to try merging your TV with the Web. I’m still not convinced you want that to happen, but more on that later. Meantime, here’s a Web/TV merger that does make sense: NBC late-night host Jimmy Fallon,watching his own show on tape while commenting on it, live, on the Web. Really, it does make sense: Like all late-night shows, Fallon’s is recorded in the afternoon, the day of broadcast. But next week, each night the show airs, Fallon will go live on the Web at 12:30 Eastern and provide a running commentary on the show, DVD-style. Fans will also be able to chat and interact with him, via video powered by UStream. Pretty clever convergence, no? Aside: Fallon’s show has always been a deliberately Web-friendly one. Fallon is a fairly famous Twitterer, which has caused some problems in the past, and the show goes out of its way to book tech-savvy guests like the Digg dudes. And it’s also good about offering Internet-only goodies like this clip–an off-air encounter between Fallon and guest Jerry Seinfeld from last night’s show. Source: All Things Digital | 20 May 2010 | 3:04 pm Long Odds For Online Gaming Legislation In UScrimeandpunishment writes "The odds of Congress passing legislation to legalize and tax online gaming are probably no better than those of filling an inside straight, but some lawmakers are pushing for it anyway, hoping to lay the foundation for future passage. At a hearing Wednesday, one lawmaker cited numbers from industry analysts that Americans bet nearly $100 billion a year on the Internet, generating $5 billion for offshore operators. He said laws to prevent online gaming are no more effective than Prohibition was to alcohol."
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Source: Slashdot | 20 May 2010 | 2:35 pm comScore Media Metrix Ranks Top-Growing Properties and Site Categories for April 2010RESTON, Va., May 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- comScore, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly analysis of U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 May 2010 | 2:30 pm Verizon Employees in California Volunteered More Than 46,000 Hours of Work to Nonprofits in 2009THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., May 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon employees in California volunteered more than 46,000 hours with nonprofit organizations last year - the equivalent of 27 employees working full time for one year.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 May 2010 | 2:25 pm Resistant Wheat Rebuilds Cell Walls When Attacked By Hessian FliesWheat plants found to be resistant to Hessian fly larvae may be calling in reinforcements to build up rigid defenses.Christie Williams, a research scientist with the U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 May 2010 | 2:16 pm Overclock your jailbroken iPhone or iPod TouchFROM APPLETELL - Overclocking computers can increase their performance if you’re willing to assume some risk. As you’d expect, the same is true for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch. Want to know how? Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 20 May 2010 | 2:11 pm School Spy Program Contains Hacker-Friendly Security HoleA controversial software program that Pennsylvania school administrators allegedly used to spy on students has a serious security hole that makes the students vulnerable to hackers.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 2:10 pm Water Solutions For Developing CountriesLessons Learned in Oklahoma Apply Around the WorldAt the University of Oklahoma WATER Center, researchers are working to provide solutions in developing countries where clean, safe water is nonexistent. According to Center Director David Sabatini, 1 billion people in the world do not have a safe water supply, which leads to 2 million deaths a year.Located within OU’s School of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science, the OU WATER Center relies on Sabatini’s expertise in physiochemical processes for water treatment and that of the Center’s three associate directors: Robert Nairn, treatment wetlands; Randall Kolar, surface and groundwater supply; and Robert Knox, ground water hydrology.While Sabatini and his colleagues differ in their approach to solving global water challenges, the overarching goal of the Center is to address water dilemmas in countries where the need is the greatest. The Center is becoming recognized as the U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 May 2010 | 2:05 pm Prima strategy guides now on Steam. Yup, Prima still makes strategy guides!
Got an e-mail from the good folks at Steam a few moments ago detailing a new feature y’all might be interested in. I mean, the only thing anyone is going to care about today is Google TV, but I’ll do what I can to distract you from that for a moment. The deal is that Prima Guides are now available for use in-game. You know, via that shift+tab overlay thing. The service has launched with a few guides: Dragon Age: Origins, Just Cause 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Splinter Cell: Conviction. That’s an eclectic group to kick things off with. Of course, you can read the guides outside of Steam, too. The guides are usually $19.99, but they’re $9.99 as part of some introductory offer. Which brings us to an unofficial poll: what was the last strategy game you bought? I’m thinking mine was Final Fantasy VIII way back in 1999. Then I found GameFaqs…
Source: CrunchGear | 20 May 2010 | 2:00 pm Lightning May Cause HallucinationsLightning strokes could stimulate people's brains and cause them to hallucinate bright blobs of light the same way a medical procedure that applies magnetic fields to the brain does, two physicists propose.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 2:00 pm In Europe, Google Faces New Inquiries on Privacy - New York Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 May 2010 | 1:32 pm StarCraft II to be censored for South Korean release
Remember, this is a game where you send soldiers to gruesome, extraterrestrial death by the thousand. I guess it’s not such a big deal, but it’s depressing to see something so deeply embedded in the national identity of the crisis being compromised by spurious and arbitrary “moral values.” Blizzard is considering releasing an intact version separately, which I’m sure they must do, as that will be considered the “definitive version” and if they don’t, someone will just write a 100MB hack that fixes everything. It’s a bit like when a director makes a movie, and then the producer or studio thinks they need to add this or that, cut out this scene, give the protagonist a CG sidekick… of course we’ll all wait for the director’s cut. No doubt StarCraft II will arrive in the US whole, cigarette references and all, and with stuff like Bulletstorm already threatening our impressionable youth, I don’t think the moral pundits here in the states will even bat an eyelash.
Source: CrunchGear | 20 May 2010 | 1:30 pm iPads on Track to Outsell the MacSales of the iPad have outpaced the Mac, according to an analyst's calculations.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 20 May 2010 | 1:20 pm Accordion Players Step into the L.A. Spotlight
Get ready to unleash your inner Weird Al Yankovic and sign up for the Roland U.S. V-Accordion Festival! This headbanging event will be held in Los Angeles (home to the Van Halen, Motley Crue, Ratt, and other well-known accordion-influenced bands) on Saturday, September 18. Aspiring accordion artists can submit application videos until July 15. If that dusty old thing you found in Grandpa Hertzel’s attic isn’t cutting it anymore, you can pick up a snazzy new Roland V-Accordion. The company features 14 models, ranging in price from about $1,300 to $3,600. You can even rock a threatening instrument like the white-with-tribal-accents Fr-1b accordion pictured here. Don’t forget, guitar virtuoso Steve Vai started his musical career as an accordion player. So add some waltz machines into your gadget arsenal.
Source: CrunchGear | 20 May 2010 | 1:05 pm Artificial Butterfly Takes FlightThe life-sized, robotic butterfly in the video below has proven an aerodynamic principle that could have big implications in the field. Scientists Hiroto Tanaka of Harvard University and Isao Shimoyama of the University of Tokyo, Japan, mimicked the flight of ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 12:49 pm iPads on Track to Outsell the Mac
Sales of the iPad are already outpacing those of the Mac in the United States, according to an analyst’s calculations. Apple is selling more than 200,000 iPads per week, says Mike Abramsky, an RBC Capital Markets analyst. That’s almost twice the rate of Mac computers, which average about 110,000 units sold each week. The iPad isn’t outselling the iPhone, though it’s coming close. Apple was selling about 246,000 units of the iPhone 3GS per week during its first quarter of launch. “Checks indicate that U.S. iPad sales remain strong post-launch, driven by rising consumer visibility to iPad’s user experience, sustained PR/word-of-mouth marketing, 3G iPad launch, and broadening iPad apps/content,” Abramsky said in a note to clients. Apple announced in early May that it sold one million iPads after only one month. In light of his calculations, Abramsky estimates the company will sell 8 million iPads in 2010, up from his previous projection of 5 million. The iPad has only been selling for a month and a half, and it’s difficult to tell whether the 200,000 figure will hold steady in the coming months. However, it’s still significant that early signs suggest the iPad is growing quickly. After all, the Mac category consists of several models of multiple computers, including the Mac Mini, iMac and MacBook Pro. So it’s surprising to see that early sales of the iPad, which comes in six different configurations, have already outpaced the sales of all those Mac models combined. What’s more, Apple has not marketed the iPad as a computer replacement, but rather a new device category sitting in between a smartphone and a computer. It’s possible the iPad is tapping into the enormous audience that was interested in netbooks, which sit in the same “in-between” category. Add to that the media-hungry customers choosing the more versatile iPad over the iPod, along with the grandmas who have never owned a computer before buying an iPad, and it becomes clear why the tablet is selling so quickly. From Digital Daily See Also:
Photo: Brian Derballa/Wired.com 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 May 2010 | 12:45 pm T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide coming June 2nd for $179.99
At first, there was one. One rumor to rule them all. According to this rumor, the myTouch Slide would be hitting store shelves on June 2nd. And then.. another was born. The sky darkened and the sun fell black; according to this second rumor, the myTouch Slide would be reaching stores not on June 2nd, but June 16th. Turns out, they’re both sort-of-right. Hurray! As predicted, the Slide will come in three colors: Black, White, or Red. Props to T-mobile for not dubbing these colors “Ghostly White”, “Butt-spank Red” or any of those other nonsense names generally associated with hue variants. Expect to drop $229.99 out the door, with a $50 mail-in rebate bringing the final price down to $179.99 on a 2-year contract.
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 12:43 pm Sharkskin Paint Reduces Drag on Airplanes, Ships and Wind TurbinesSharks are intriguing, phenomenal creatures. Not only do they come in 440 species, they have they been around for more than 420 million years -- before the dinosaurs! One thing that surprised me about sharks is that their skin is ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 12:26 pm Eric Schmidt Presides Over The Marriage Of The 50-Year-Old TV And The Teenage Web
"We've been waiting a long time for today," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who is presiding over a power panel of CEOs helping to make Google TV possible. The panel, at Google I/O, includes the CEOs of Sony, Best Buy, Echostar, Adobe, Logitech, and, of course, Google. He needs all of them, as well as developers, to make his new Google TV a hit.
Google TV will be built into a new Sony TV coming out this fall in time for the holiday shopping season, as well a Logitech TV companion box which can be hooked up to existing TVs with an HDMI port. It is Google's attempt to bring together the 50-year-old TV-watching experience with the Web. It does that in a variety of ways,from a universal search box which searches both TV and the Web to opening up the TV as an application platform for developers and media companies to enhance their video offerings. Its ambition is to bring the Web into the TV in a new way.
Source: CrunchGear | 20 May 2010 | 12:24 pm Google TV Unveiled. It’s All About The Ad ReachToday at Google I/O, the company made the announcement that everyone was waiting for — Google TV. While some glitches in the demo (with the Bluetooth keyboard) prevented it from being a “wow” moment, the implications are pretty clear what Google is going for. That is, the 4 billion TV users worldwide. Or rather, advertising to the 4 billion TV users worldwide. Google noted that while computer usage is huge with 1 billion users, and mobile is even bigger with 2 billion users, TV is the real massive medium with 4 billion users around the world. Further, Google notes that people spend 5 hours a day on average in the U.S. watching TV — and that’s more than ever before. Then the real stat came out. 70 billion dollars. that’s the annual ad spend on television in U.S. alone.
Source: CrunchGear | 20 May 2010 | 12:21 pm Picasso, Matisse Paintings Stolen in Paris Art HeistA thief stole five paintings from the Paris Museum of Modern Art worth more than half a billion dollars.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 12:01 pm HTC: If your phone came out in 2010, it’ll probably get Android 2.2
So you just bought the Android 2.1-powered Droid Incredible, or locked in a pre-order for the HTC EVO 4G.. and now Google’s gone and announced Android 2.2. Great. Don’t fret; if your phone started shipping in 2010 (read: the Droid Incredible, myTouch Slide, EVO 4G, Desire), it’ll almost certainly get the upgrade treatment, according to HTC.
Source: CrunchGear | 20 May 2010 | 11:59 am HTC: If your phone came out in 2010, it’ll probably get Android 2.2
So you just bought the Android 2.1-powered Droid Incredible, or locked in a pre-order for the HTC EVO 4G.. and now Google’s gone and announced Android 2.2. Great. Don’t fret; if your phone started shipping in 2010 (read: the Droid Incredible, myTouch Slide, EVO 4G, Desire), it’ll almost certainly get the upgrade treatment, according to HTC.
Of course, that leaves plenty of handsets unspoken for. While it’s reasonable to think that HTC might eventually stop supporting some older handsets, what about those that are just outside of 2009? The Droid Eris was released in November of 2009 — will it get to ride the train to upgradeville with all of its friends? As usual, we’ll have to wait and see. The best part of all of it: the bit about them expecting “to release all updates in the second half of this year”. Sure, it’s not as specific as the update-hounds might want — but considering that the second half of this year begins in just a little over a month, it could be a whole lot worse.
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 11:47 am Voice Over Revision A to power Verizon Wireless’ iPhone?
Will the iPhone come out for Verizon Wireless? It’s the question that so many of the service’s subscribers would like to see answered definitively. This news story, unfortunately, won’t do that. What it will do, however, is fan the flames of the rumor fire. The latest is that the phone would work with Voice Over Revision A. In English that means the phone would be able to handle both voice and data connections simultaneously. As you know, CDMA phones cannot handle both at the same time—if you’re browsing the Web on your Droid or Incredible and a call comes in, your data connection drops off in order to accommodate the incoming voice. GSM has no such issues. This could sorta be seen as a stopgap move, in between the current vanilla CDMA implementation and LTE, or Voice Over LTE more specifically. Of course, the big rumor is still that CDMA iPhones will be massed produced beginning in August in September. The very moment, if it ever happens, that Verizon Wireless announces availability of the iPhone, be sure to check AT&T stock. That should be fun (unless you’re a shareholder).
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 11:45 am Google Introduces Google TV, New Android OSGoogle announces a new product to help users find and watch live television and web video from a single interface. Also revealed: details of Android 2.2 mobile operating system.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 20 May 2010 | 11:43 am Musk Turtles Breathe Underwater Through Their TonguesOne type of turtle possesses an extraordinary organ that lets the reptile breathe underwater and stay submerged for many months.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 May 2010 | 11:41 am Building Organs with 'Biological Legos'If you were like me growing up, you spent countless hours building all types of structures out of wood blocks and plastic Legos. Researchers at MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology want to make building a human organ out ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 11:33 am Gene Discovery Potential Key To Cost-competitive Cellulosic EthanolImage Caption: Steven Brown (left) and Shihui Yang, researchers in ORNL's Bioenergy Research Center, have developed a strain of microorganism with an improved ability to convert wood products to biofuel.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 May 2010 | 11:25 am Google Introduces Google TV, New Android OS
SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft and Apple have been trying to get into your living room for years, with a variety of television-oriented products. Now Google thinks it can succeed where other computer companies have seen only middling success. The company announced a new set-top box platform here Thursday: Google TV will marry television and the web, so users can search and view both TV and web videos with a single click. Google TV, which is based on Google’s Android operating system, will have access to Flickr, gaming sites such as Club Penguin, and music sites such as Pandora and Rhapsody. It will combine that with a streaming media interface similar to that offered by companies like Boxee and Roku. “There are three big limitations with the streaming media devices that exist today,” said Rishi Chandra, senior product manager at Google, speaking at the company’s developer conference, Google I/O. “They try to dumb down the web for TV. They are all closed. Many of these devices have to choose between TV and the web.” Google has formed partnerships with Sony, Logitech and Intel to create hardware that will run this “smart TV” Android platform. The Google TV software will be available on TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes through Best Buy in fall this year. It will be independent of the cable service providers. All devices running the Google TV software will have Wi-Fi and ethernet connectivity, a keyboard and a “pointing device” or a mouse. Google has also partnered with Dish Network to integrate Google TV into Dish’ digital video recorders (DVRs). Google TV can also be controlled using an Android phone as a remote, says Chandra, and the mobile version of the Android market — Google’s marketplace for Android-compatible apps — will be accessible on Google TV. “It’s a blockbuster announcement,” says Ken Dulaney, an analyst with research firm Gartner. “Google is bringing its brand and openness to a space where Apple and Microsoft haven’t done much with.” Google also announced at the conference the release of the latest version of Android OS, Android 2.2, aka ‘FroYo’. It will support Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1, so the mobile operating system’s users can access all those Flash video and animation-heavy sites that are inaccessible to the users of other smartphones. FroYo will also have tethering and hotspot capabilities, enabling phones to share their broadband data connections with other devices, such as your laptop — assuming your carrier permits that use. “We have big dreams for Android,” Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering of Google told attendees at the conference. Three years after Google introduced Android as an open source mobile operating system, it has become one of the fastest-growing mobile platforms. A host of Android-based phones grabbed 28 percent of the smartphone market in the United States, trailing Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices (36 percent) and ahead of Apple’s iPhone OS (21 percent) in the first quarter of the year, according to research firm The NPD Group. More than 60 devices run Android today, says Google, including handsets from major phone makers such as Motorola and HTC. Now, more than 100,000 Android phones are activated every day, says Google. And more than 50,000 applications are available on the Android Market now. Interest in Google’s sold-out developer conference has been so high this year that tickets were auctioned on eBay and Craigslist. Google’s move into TV platforms comes at a time when its rivals such as Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo have faltered. Apple’s Steve Jobs has famously declared its Apple TV as a “hobby,” while Yahoo’s Connected TV project that brings widgets and apps to TV sets hasn’t gathered steam. Google could succeed because the company is making the Google TV platform open source and building a broad coalition of partners, similar to what it has done with Android, says Dulaney. “Apple basically says I will do it all myself and it will be tightly controlled,” says Dulaney. “It provides one dimension in usability but also slows the pace of adoption. There’s also a huge marketplace outside of Apple that wants to participate and feels left out of anything Google does.” Google TV though is likely to hurt Microsoft the most. Microsoft’s digital media player is shipped with every copy of Windows operating system, but it hasn’t been able to capture consumers’ attention, says Dulaney. Also at the conference, Google stated that FroYo will have a just-in-time compiler to speed up apps, making them two to five times faster with the same hardware. It will also be Microsoft Exchange–friendly so it will have better security policies for business users and a better way to manage corporate devices running Android. Android will also offer wireless internet-based downloading of music albums. Google will also offer AdSense for mobile apps with different ad formats. These formats include expandable ads that will offer more details of the product, and a click-to-call feature next to the ad. “If Google didn’t act, we face a draconian future. One man, one company, one device would control our future,” Gundotra told attendees at the conference, making a clear swipe at Apple — without mentioning Apple by name. “If you believe in openness and choice, welcome to Android.” See Also:
Photo: Google 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 May 2010 | 11:17 am Announcing Google TV: TV meets web. Web meets TV.If there’s one entertainment device that people know and love, it’s the television. In fact, 4 billion people across the world watch TV and the average American spends five hours per day in front of one*. Recently, however, an increasing amount of our entertainment experience is coming from our phones and computers. One reason is that these devices have something that the TV lacks: the web. With the web, finding and accessing interesting content is fast and often as easy as a search. But the web still lacks many of the great features and the high-quality viewing experience that the TV offers.So that got us thinking...what if we helped people experience the best of TV and the best of the web in one seamless experience? Imagine turning on the TV and getting all the channels and shows you normally watch and all of the websites you browse all day — including your favorite video, music and photo sites. We’re excited to announce that we’ve done just that. Google TV is a new experience for television that combines the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet. With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the web. Your television is also no longer confined to showing just video. With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV — it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more. Google TV uses search to give you an easy and fast way to navigate to television channels, websites, apps, shows and movies. For example, already know the channel or program you want to watch? Just type in the name and you’re there. Want to check out that funny YouTube video on your 48” flat screen? It’s just a quick search away. If you know what you want to watch, but you’re not sure where to find it, just type in what you’re looking for and Google TV will help you find it on the web or on one of your many TV channels. If you’d rather browse than search, you can use your standard program guide, your DVR or the Google TV home screen, which provides quick access to all of your favorite entertainment so you’re always within reach of the content you love most. Because Google TV is built on open platforms like Android and Google Chrome, these features are just a fraction of what Google TV can do. In our announcement today at Google I/O, we challenged web developers to start coming up with the next great web and Android apps designed specifically for the TV experience. Developers can start optimizing their websites for Google TV today. Soon after launch, we’ll release the Google TV SDK and web APIs for TV so that developers can build even richer applications and distribute them through Android Market. We've already started building strategic alliances with a number of companies — like Jinni.com and Rovi — at the leading edge of innovation in TV technology. Jinni.com is a next-generation TV application working to provide semantic search, personalized recommendation and social features for Google TV across all sources of premium content available to the user. Rovi is one of the world's leading guide applications. We’re looking forward to seeing all of the ways developers will use this new platform. We’re working together with Sony and Logitech to put Google TV inside of televisions, Blu-ray players and companion boxes. These devices will go on sale this fall, and will be available at Best Buy stores nationwide. You can sign up here to get updates on Google TV availability. This is an incredibly exciting time — for TV watchers, for developers and for the entire TV ecosystem. By giving people the power to experience what they love on TV and on the web on a single screen, Google TV turns the living room into a new platform for innovation. We're excited about what’s coming. We hope you are too. Update 2:26PM: Updated to include more information about other developers. Posted by Salahuddin Choudhary, Google TV Product Manager    
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 20 May 2010 | 11:00 am Google Chrome Web App Store: 5 Things You Should Know - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 20 May 2010 | 10:53 am It's Alive! Artificial Life Springs From Manmade DNAA team of scientists create the first real-life "Frankenstein" by injecting man-made DNA into a previously lifeless cell.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 20 May 2010 | 10:42 am Prehistoric Frogs Face ExtinctionThe world's most ancient frogs may soon be mined to extinction, if the New Zealand government's plans to open up a conservation area for mining go ahead.The primitive Archey's frog (Leiopelma archeyi) and Hochstetter's frog (Leiopelma hochstetteri) are two of the species that inhabit the area of 'high conservation value' on New Zealand's North Island where the mining is planned to take place.Archey's frog is currently ranked top of the Zoological Society of London's (ZSL) EDGE of Existence amphibian list, making it the most evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered amphibian on the planet.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 May 2010 | 10:22 am Oprah Moment, Take 2: Google gives an EVO 4G to everyone at I/O
Okay. Think back to elementary school. Your buddy got a brand new toy for Christmas — the one you’ve been wanting for months. Your parents got you socks. Remember that feeling? That feeling of loss for something you never had? That’s called jealousy, friend. Now magnify that by a hundred. Google just gave everyone at I/O the EVO 4G. As Vic Gundotra put it: “To everyone watching back home on Youtube.. I’m.. I’m sorry? Register early next year!” Yeah, that includes me. Sad face emoticon here. This continues Google’s (lovely) history of giving away handsets at events. At I/O last year, all attendees were given special edition, I/O-themed HTC Magics. At MWC 2010 in Barcelona, attendees of Google’s Developer events were given Nexus Ones. Devs were also offered the choice between a Nexus One and a Droid during IO registration — so unless Google’s going to make these devs hand over the goods, some folks might be going home with not one, but two free toys. Not a bad deal.
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 10:21 am Biodiesel From Sewage Sludge Within Pennies A Gallon Of Being CompetitiveImage Caption: Sewage sludge, shown at a waste-water treatment plant, could provide a new source of biodiesel fuel that is cost-competitive with conventional diesel. Credit: iStockSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 May 2010 | 10:17 am Android Froyo, with some sprinklesSince launching the first Android-powered phone with T-Mobile in October 2008, we have worked with operators, handset manufacturers and developers to make Android one of the most useful, innovative mobile platforms available.We've been thrilled by the adoption of the platform over the past year and a half. Every day, our partners sell more than 100,000 new Android-based handsets, and there are now more than 180,000 active Android developers who have contributed more than 50,000 apps now available in Android Market—up 12,000 since last month alone! Today at I/O, our annual developer conference, we announced Android 2.2. Codenamed Froyo (for frozen yogurt), this seventh update to the Android platform brings some great new functionality to users (things like making your handset a portable hotspot and support for Adobe Flash within the browser), along with new tools for developers. Read more about the specifics of Froyo on our Android Developer Blog. Posted by Andy Rubin, VP, Engineering   
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 20 May 2010 | 10:15 am Mercury Levels Are Increasing In Popular Species Of Game Fish In Lake ErieImage Caption: Lake trout, a popular species of game fish in Lake Erie, appear to have increasing mercury levels after three decades of steadily declining levels. Credit: iStockSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 May 2010 | 10:12 am Google Now Activating 100,000 Android Devices A Day — 50,000 Android Apps
Today at Google I/O Vic Gundotra made a big revelation. Last year, Google was activating 30,000 Android phones a day. The past February, that number jumped to 60,000. Today, Google is now activating over 100,000 Android phones a day. Android was the second best-selling smartphone this quarter, Gundotra says. They are only behind RIM — and yes, ahead of that other rival. Gundotra also pointed out the stat from AdMob that Android was first in terms of web and app usage among smartphones. And that’s not all. Gundotra also announced that there were now over 50,000 apps available for the platform. And there are some 180,000 developers working on the platform. There are now over 60 compatible Android devices from 21 OEMs in 48 countries. The devices are spread across 59 carriers.
[crunchbase url="http://www.crunchbase.com/product/android,http://www.crunchbase.com/company/google" name="Android,Google"]
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 10:12 am Unroasted Coffee Beans Proteins May Become Next-generation InsecticidesImage Caption: Unroasted coffee beans contain proteins that kill insects, a finding that may lead to new insecticides for protecting food crops. Credit: Fernando Rebelo, Wikimedia CommonsSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 May 2010 | 10:08 am Skyfire launches their first B2B offering: Skyfire Rocket
We’ve written about Skyfire before. Plenty of times, actually. It’s the smartphone browser that, by way of data-compression proxies (and tiny wizards), can chew through Flash video and other Rich media formats on Android, Windows Mobile, and S60 handsets. Thus far, Skyfire has been an entirely business-to-consumer operation. Today, Skyfire makes the good ol’ jump to business-to-business with the launch of Skyfire Rocket. Rocket comes in two parts: Rocket Device Client and Rocket Cloud Platform. To my understanding, Rocket Device Client is essentially a white-labeled version of Skyfire 2.0. Debuted on Android just weeks ago, Skyfire 2.0 differs from versions prior in a few major ways: it’s build on WebKit, only video data is sent through Skyfire’s data conversion proxy, and that happens only once the user specifically selects a video to view from the “Skybar”. The Rocket Platform, on the other hand, is for carriers and manufacturers who want what Skyfire has to offer, but want it in their own browser. In other words, Skyfire is licensing out the video streaming, data compression, and content recommendation tech they’ve built to any third-party willing to cough up the dough. It’ll be interesting to see how this one goes. Smartphone platforms tend to come with their own browsers, with OEMs and carriers only supplanting the built-in offering when it’s.. well, when it’s pretty terrible. Will this see enough adoption to warrant its creation?
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 10:01 am First Look: Flash Arrives on New Android OS
Flash has been a contentious point for the ongoing battle between Apple and Adobe. The latest volley: Adobe is releasing Flash Player 10.1 for mobile phones and desktops today. And it is piggy-backing on Google’s fast growing Android operating system to hit back at Apple. Google’s latest mobile operating system, Android 2.2, aka FroYo, will support Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1, a new version that claims to be optimized for mobile viewing. That will make Android the first mobile operating system to support the full Flash player, instead of the stripped-down Flash Lite player that is currently found on most smartphones with Flash support. Among PC users, Flash is popular: It is on more than 98 percent of all browsers, and the platform claims more than 3 million developers worldwide. Nearly 70 percent of web-based games are built using Flash, says Adobe. But when Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, it stunned users by shunning Flash, instead creating its own walled garden of applications including games for its customers to play with. That’s led many to announce, somewhat prematurely, the death of Flash. We tested different websites with the Flash 10.1 Player on a Nexus One running Android 2.2, and here’s our first take: With Flash on your phone, no website is really out of bounds. Flash does not appear to be a battery hog, nor does it chew away at your phone’s resources. But it’s not a flawless experience either. Flash content — especially video — can take up to a minute to load, which is more frustrating on a phone than it is on a desktop. And it sucks bandwidth. Our corporate Wi-Fi connection just didn’t seem good enough, and most Flash-heavy sites took a while to load. Still it is a step forward and with fine-tuning, the beta version of the Flash Player should get better. Read on to see how Flash did on Android 2.2 OS. Flash is fun — when it works.Accessing many restaurant websites, movie trailers or most fashion sites on the iPhone is impossible. It’s isn’t a big inconvenience, but the small, blue, Lego-like icon that appears in place of Flash content has come to signify the part of the online world that’s cut off to an iPhone user. With Flash Player 10.1 on Android 2.2, one of the first things I did was check out Swadley’s, a barbecue restaurant in Oaklahoma City that a friend mentioned a few days ago. Swadley’s website, built using Flash, has the outline of a cowboy on a horse galloping through the front page. It’s cheesy on a desktop, but on an iPhone it’s just a black hole. My new Nexus One browser had no such problems. The Swadley’s site loads exactly as it does on the desktop, and was fast enough to signal the promise of the technology. From there, I hopped on to the Sony Pictures web site to check out the trailer for Karate Kid, a re-make starring Will Smith’s son Jaden Smith. I could watch the trailers, pinch-to-enlarge it and check out some of the trivia on the site. But Flash stumbled here, forcing me to reload the site about three times when the trailer didn’t pop up on the screen the way it was supposed to. The Warner Bros. site optimized for Flash Player 10.1 did better, with movie trailers playing flawlessly on the phone. That’s not to say everything is perfect with Flash Player 10.1. Fashion websites have been big supporters of Flash, using it to showcase videos of their latest collections and runway presentations. Chanel’s site has a video that shows its Cruise 2010 collection. Five seconds into the video, it failed to play and the spinning circle took over the site, forcing me to close it down. For Hulu enthusiasts, there’s bad news. Flash Player 10.1 doesn’t mean you can revisit Lost episodes on the phone. Hulu doesn’t own the distribution rights for its content on mobile devices and so won’t stream to any mobile device, says Adobe. Flash-based games sites, including Club Penguin, were accessible to the FroYo phone, in stark contrast to the iPhone (and previous versions of Android). But that’s where the fun ended. Loading the content is a frustratingly long process, and the Club Penguin site seemed to challenge the processing power of the phone, so my penguin on the phone couldn’t do much. Flash Player 10.1 supports gestures, such as dragging your finger to scroll the screen or double-tapping on the video, and that works pretty smoothly. Optimized battery lifeApple’s biggest beef with Adobe Flash is that the technology hogs battery life and is a drain on system resources. Adobe says it has made tweaks that will shut down the Flash Player 10.1 when the system runs out of memory. As I surfed a number of Flash-heavy websites, played movie trailers and little video clips on and off for about two hours. the battery level on my phone was down to about 61 percent from a fully charged battery. Adobe says Flash Player 10.1 along with FroYo will be available starting June, though handset makers and carriers might take longer to push it to consumers. Ultimately, Flash will be available on the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and webOS platforms — basically everything except the iPhone, says Adobe — though the company didn’t give specific availability for other platforms. But three years after Apple declared a war against mobile Flash, you have to wonder if Adobe’s efforts are too late. The online video landscape has changed significantly. Many major websites are switching to to HTML5, and video players such as Brightcove are serving up HTML5 videos for devices not compliant with Flash. Separately, Apple has worked with companies such as YouTube to produce iPhone versions of their sites. And even galloping-cowboy animations can be rendered using HTML5, eventually. As a user, whether your phone supports Flash or not is increasingly becoming irrelevant. Getting Flash Player 10.1 mobile out is just the first step for Adobe. It will be greater challenge for the firm to show why mobile-phone users should really care about it. See Also:
Photo: Flash Player 10.1 on a Nexus One phone 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 May 2010 | 10:00 am Oil Reaches Louisiana Marshlands, Threatens Marine LifeImage Caption: Jason Duke, a geographic information systems coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service directs an airboat to search for oil off the coast of South Pass, La. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is providing on-the-ground intelligence on oil sightings and clean up methods to the Unified Area Command located in Robert, La. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Stephen Lehmann.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 May 2010 | 10:00 am Google officially announces Android 2.2, or “Froyo”
It’s official! As expected, Google has officially announced Android 2.2 at their I/O conference this morning. Click through for the list of new goodies. Whats New:
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 9:44 am Commonly Used Atrazine Herbicide Adversely Affects Fish ReproductionAtrazine, one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world, has been shown to affect reproduction of fish, according to a new U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 May 2010 | 9:31 am Voice-Controlled Alarm-Clock Does Your Bidding
Like me, most of you have probably given up on purpose-made alarm clocks in favor of a cellphone under the pillow, or the less brain-boiling option of an iPod or other non-cellular clock. Unlike me, you probably get out of bed when the alarm rings, or at least after a few rounds of hitting snooze and nodding back off (I just kick the Lady out of bed and wait for her to awaken me with coffee and a smoothie). But the most annoying part of getting up - having to actually move and press buttons whilst still groggy from dreams of being chased through treacle-aired street - is removed from this little Moshi alarm clock, a “digital” clock radio that can be silenced merely by telling it to shut up. The voice-activated Moshi will use its digital AM/FM tuner to provide the wake-up music, and it can also lull you to sleep with your own music by hooking up an external source through a line-in jack. Snooze time is the industry standard nine minutes, allowing you to roll back into your stupor simply by whispering the correct instruction. You can even tune the radio and set the alarm via voice, but those are probably best done when you aren’t moaning groggily and slurring your words. The Voice Control Digital Clock Radio will cost you $70. For those still unconvinced, Moshi is planning an iPhone app soon, which should let you simple moan “Just let me sleeeeeep” into your pillow and the iPhone thereunder will obediently comply. Available now. Voice Control Digital Clock Radio [Moshi. Thanks, Valerie!] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 May 2010 | 8:05 am eBuddy downloaded 1 million times from Nokia’s Ovi Store in 3 months
The app has been downloaded by users in more than 203 countries, the company adds – a testament to the global footprint of Nokia. The app has garnered over 930 reviews on the Ovi Store and a 4/5 star rating. Alternatives on Nokia’s Ovi Store include Nimbuzz and fring. That said, eBuddy is easily one of the most popular mobile instant messaging applications in the world – it enables millions of users around the world to chat for free in one, aggregated interface across all major IM networks including AIM, Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Hyves, ICQ, MySpace, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger. In total, eBuddy’s mobile applications have been downloaded over 75 million times, and more than 15 million unique mobile users access eBuddy every month, sending over 7.5 billion messages.
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 7:58 am Versace announce Unique luxury phone, in name and practise
Versace also know this, and have just announced a luxury phone designed especially for you. They’re calling it the “Unique”, because that’s what you are. The hand-assembled-in-France device touts an “impossible to scratch” sapphire touchscreen of unknown resolution (not that you care about that anyway), and to my knowledge, this may be the first luxury phone to have a touch interface. I bet you can’t wait to show your buddies at the country club that little technological marvel! I scoff at their Vertus! LG provide the innards, which will allow you to call people (over 3G!), check your email, take 5MP flash photos, listen to mp3s, and even watch movies. It may not best an Ally, but don’t Versace believe that it’s what’s on the outside that counts, anyway? Now, just in case the purple leather clashes with the interior of your Ferrari, you can rest assured that the phone can also be purchased in black, with your choice of 18k gold or 316L grade stainless steel accents. But here’s something interesting: apparently the 5MP camera has both a flash and a netbook! I don’t know what that means, either, but the press release seems adamant. I’ve emphasised it for you, below. Oh, the price? If you need to ask…
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 7:21 am Honl Adds Softbox to Light-Shaping Tools
Dave Honl, our favorite maker of light-shaping tools, has added a circular soft-box to his lineup of small-flash accessories. The nylon and polyethylene cone folds flat and joins Dave’s snoots, grids and reflectors. The big difference between the new traveller8 softbox is that, as its name suggests, it softens light and spreads it out. All Dave Honl’s other kit is designed to control and focus light exactly where you want it. The traveller8 attaches to the small flash head the same way as all the other Honl modifiers: You wrap around the included rubberized, Velcro Speed Strap and the soft-box then Velcros onto this. Folded, the soft cone is around 11 x 9-inches, and weighs in at under four ounces. The traveller8 may seem expensive at $70, but if it is made to the same standards of the rest of the range (which we have tested), then it should last you just shy of forever. Honl Photo traveller8 Softbox [Honlphoto via Strobist] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 May 2010 | 6:58 am Convertible Coffee-Table Desk, for Tall People With Short Arms
The table sits innocently in your living room, its slightly too-tall shape providing a shiny brown surface, just like any other coffee-table. But when you need to scoff a TV dinner or get some work done on your notebook computer, the lid pops open and rises up like the lid-activated storage drawers in a toolbox. The birch-veneer and walnut-covered top pantographs 15-inches towards you and sits at a height of 31-inches, a makeshift desk that sits… Right in front of your face. If you’re wondering, that’s too high. I sat on my sofa and measured. 31-inches is around my chest height, and I’m over six-two. In fact, this desk is higher than my actual desk. Moreover, it is higher than my desk was before I cut the legs down so I could use it comfortably (and yes, I have a proper adjustable chair). If you’re looking for a coffee table, then, which will flip up and allow very tall people with high chairs to use it as a work-surface, then go ahead and spend the $200. If you’re planning on using this as a quick way to more comfortably do some work whilst lazing on the sofa, or to safely eat a snack, forget it. Unless you are Mr. Fantastic, or have the body proportions of a T-rex, you’ll be sweeping those Doritos directly off the table-top and letting them drop into your mouth. The Convertible Coffee Table [Hammacher Schlemmer via Oh Gizmo!] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 May 2010 | 5:46 am Samsung i8920 Omnia HD2 leaking its way across the net as we speak
The leaks thus far point to a 4″ Super AMOLED screen, a 12MP camera with both Xenon and LED flash (why not?), 30fps 720p video recording (just like its older sibling), and 16 or 32 GB internal storage, all running atop Symbian^3. Oh, and it also includes the soon-to-be-standard-on-high-end-phones WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. No details of screen resolution were leaked, but some people are suggesting 640×360. That resolution on a 4″ screen would be… lousy… so let’s hope for something better when and if more details trickle out. Now, here’s some salt (you know, the grains of which you should be taking with this): the left-hand side of the screen looks a little dodgy, so it could be ’shopped. …aaand it’s Symbian. Now, no offence to the OS, but I’m finding it pretty hard to get excited about any phone running Symbian when there are so many better alternatives out there (well, two of them). Also, Unwired View add that Samsung are rumoured to stop making Symbian phones by 2011, so this could very well be the last Symbian phone from the Korean manufacturer. [via Unwired View]
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 May 2010 | 5:46 am International iPad App Store Now Open for Business
Good news for international iPad owners. Apple has finally switched on the iPad App Store in your country. Or rather, it is in the process of switching it on in those countries that will be lucky enough to get the iPad itself at the end of this month. Up until today, getting iPad apps outside the US had to be done via iTunes (I have a bunch of apps queued-up on my Mac ready for my iPad delivery, due any minute now) and then transferred across via sync. Now reports are coming in that the in-iPad store is live for direct browsing and download. This has the advantage of allowing you to narrow-in on iPad-only and universal apps. It does seem that the iBooks application is still unavailable internationally, if only so you can read your own, home-converted EPUB files. As it is a free app, though, you can just make a US iTunes account and download anyway. We’re pretty sure some international Gadget Lab readers already have iPads. How did you get them? Is the new App Store showing up in your country already? Answers, as always, in the comments. iPad App Store Launches for International Tableteers [Slashgear] Photo: Mat Packer/Flickr See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 May 2010 | 3:24 am Netflix Update Adds iPad Video-Out
The trick with Apple’s $30 dongle is that developers need to explicitly give it a purpose. Unlike hooking a monitor up to a notebook computer, you don’t automatically get either an extra screen or a mirrored version of the existing one. Instead, the developer decides what, if anything, gets shown. Apple’s Keynote app, for example, shows the presentation slideshow only, letting the iPad’s own screen show the control interface. Many apps will only show a blank external screen until a movie is played or a slideshow started. So now you can hook your iPad up to a TV, sit back and watch big screen Netflix movies, albeit in low-res, analog VGA. It’s handy for hotels, we guess, or ad-hoc movie sessions at a friend’s home, but we can’t help thinking that Apple’s rather more flexible, do-anything Camera Connection Kit is a far better first accessory to buy. Netflix update [iTunes via TUAW] iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter [Apple] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 May 2010 | 2:57 am HTC Hero Gets Android 2.1, Erases All Your Data
Oh, you lucky HTC Hero owner. As of yesterday, you can download and install Android 2.1 from the HTC site and enjoy some speech-to-text and pinch-to-zoom. But not so fast. Heed this warning from the download page:
Specifically, applying the update will “delete all information from your device.” And it means all. While losing contacts and other mail details is no big deal (a single sign-on to Google will bring them all back), how do you fancy losing all your text and picture messages and all applications? There are workarounds. Well, not really workarounds: More lame excuses and procedures to fix a broken design. You can back up text and picture messages, “by forwarding them to an email address”. This sounds handy until you realize you need to send a single email for each and every message. And applications? Easy, just “re-download the desired applications from the Market after this update completes.” Presumably you’ll need to re-input all your user and app login details. Nice. There is one area that the update won’t wipe, and that’s your microSD card. We’d pop that sucker out during the update, though, just in case. This is why normal people buy iPhones. Forget “open” or “closed”. This is about ease of use. To update an iPhone, you click a button when iTunes tells you and then wait for all the shiny new features, complete with all your old data. Here’s one more terrifying snippet to go home with:
HTC HERO (SPRINT) 2.1 SOFTWARE UPDATE [HTC via ★ and Twitter] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 May 2010 | 2:28 am
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Earlier today, Yahoo sent out an email to the press notifying us about a special event on Monday with CEO 
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On March 27 Simplify Media announced that they would no longer be offering new accounts for it’s service. Soon after the company removed downloads of both it’s desktop and iPhone apps used for streaming media from the desktop to the phone. The company blog simply stated that the service would relaunch soon, but that it couldn’t talk about the future plans.
And of course Google will have to accommodate the providers, as well: after all, it’s NBC or CBS or FOX that creates, licenses, and owns the content every Google TV viewer will want. It goes both ways — but it’s been a long time since it’s gone any way but the networks’. People have been clicking between channels by hitting the up and down buttons for a good 60 years now: it’s practically inborn. TV providers have been capitalizing on it for exactly as long, but now as bandwidth and accessibility catch up to television and movies as they caught up to music seven or eight years ago, they’ll have to switch their game up if they want to stay afloat. Otherwise they’ll end up like the music industry: a criminally obstinate, publicly mocked pariah, with their asses hanging in the wind, suing the customers they chiseled for half a century, and whining all the way to the poorhouse. Christ, good riddance! Let’s hope Comcast doesn’t end up the same way. Actually, on second thought, I’d pay good money to see that.
The rumored Google TV has now been confirmed at Google I/O. The AppleTV competitor is based on the Android operating system, and well, can be best explained by the product video:
It’s amazing what taking one of the best iPhone apps, making it free, and giving it a better name will do. Actually, it’s not. Twitter for iPhone has rocketed to the number 1 app (free app, but undoubtedly overall as well) in the App Store following its release yesterday. And Apple has wasted no time heaping praise on the app in its own way, by making it the coveted iPhone App of the Week in the App Store.
I have long attempted to take a generic approach. In other words, is a film true to its genre and does it deliver what its audiences presumably expect? "The Human Centipede" scores high on this scale. It is depraved and disgusting enough to satisfy the most demanding midnight movie fan. And it's not simply an exploitation film...
This morning Google opened the second day of it’s Google I/O Developers Conference with some new details on what exactly Android 2.2 Froyo will bring. Much of the update are features that have already been leaked or rumored, but now we know for sure that they will be in the next Android release.
The announcement of 
Preparations for the launch of 
If there’s one complaint that most smartphones users would have about their smartphone of choice, it’s that the battery doesn’t always last as long as they’d want it to. The problem isn’t unique to any on smartphone OS or device, though each have their own reasons why. Google co-founder Larry Page has his own explanation why the battery on Android devices tend to deplete quickly.
Today during its keynote at I/O, Google officially 
Web and mobile instant messaging (IM) aggregator service provider 
