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Fun and video games for Jake Gyllenhaal (AP)AP - Jake Gyllenhaal just wants to have fun. Hence, he's swinging back into cinemas this weekend as the swashbuckling hero in "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time."Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 May 2010 | 4:10 am Happy Towel Day! Don't forget your towel!
Happy Towel Day, Douglas Adams fans! "On the 25th of May, carry a towel. Where? Everywhere! Proudly show the world you've observed Towel Day and upload a picture to Flickr, tagging it with 'towelday' or make a YouTube video."
Today is Towel Day. Don't forget your towel! (Image: Thumbs Up, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from spyndle's photostream)  Source: Boing Boing | 25 May 2010 | 4:05 am .CO Hopes One Letter Less Is More.CO is looking to take on .COM status as the premier place for businesses online. The new domain name belongs to the nation of Colombia, and the land rush for good names will start in June.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 May 2010 | 4:05 am The New York Times Plans a Blogger-Friendly Pay Wall. Link All You Like! [MediaMemo]
Daily Finance’s Jeff Bercovici floats the scenario, by pointing to some eye-popping statistics. A new study says the Times is one of the four news sites bloggers link to most often. The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, doesn’t warrant a mention. Bercovici connects the dots: The Times is free. But the Wall Street Journal — which like this Web site, is owned by News Corp. (NWS) — has a pay wall. So if the Times puts up a wall, it could see its links dwindle, because bloggers don’t want to point to paid sites. Right? Probably not. Because that theory requires the Times management to work hard to scare away bloggers and other linkers (from Twitter, Facebook, etc). But the Times says it’s going to make the common sense move of encouraging links to the site. Remember that the Times is building a “metered model” where visitors to the site can read a certain number of articles per month for free. That’s designed to keep attracting the casual, drive-by readers that make a up a large chunk of most sites’ traffic. Even better: Bloggy links to the site won’t count against readers’ limits. So says Times spokeswoman Stacy Green, in response to an email query I sent her yesterday:
So that one’s settled, yes? If so, we can move on the more interesting question: How many of the Times’ readers will be willing to pay for access when the wall goes up? But we’re not going get an answer to that one for many months. Patience! Source: All Things Digital | 25 May 2010 | 4:00 am Motorcycle sidecar that turns into a canoe All the more reason to mourn the passing of the motorcyle sidecar: some of them could turn into canoes, at least according to this June, 1934 article in Modern Mechanix: "A MOTORCYCLE side car which doubles as a canoe on trips to the beach or river bank has recently made its appearance in Germany. The car is fitted with small metal pontoons which keep it upright in the water. Future models will be fitted with rudders, completing the transformation from side car to a navigable boat. " Side Car Serves as Boat (Jun, 1934) Source: Boing Boing | 25 May 2010 | 3:58 am No persons are to enter into this void Spotted by China Mieville, and let this be a warning to you. Source: Boing Boing | 25 May 2010 | 3:55 am HOWTO bake a no-mess chocolate cake in five minutesInstructables user scoochmaroo's recipe for five-minute chocolate scratch-cake (made in a microwave) looks like it would be deadly, molten, and delicious. Source: Boing Boing | 25 May 2010 | 3:53 am Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear and friends launch The Mongoliad: a shared universe that could only live on the Web Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear and several very talented friends (including one of the neatest hackers I know and somene whom I'm reliably assured could lay claim to the title of "World's Greatest Swordsman") have announced their new project: an online interactive fiction thinggum called The Mongoliad. The Mongoliad will consist of a series of linked stories written by different writers, a Wikipedia-style concordance, and "an ongoing stream of nontextual, para-narrative, and extra-narrative stuff which we think brings the story to life in ways that are pleasingly unique, and which can't be done in any single medium." What's more, you, the reader, will be explicitly encouraged to improve and extend the Mongoliad canon with your own fiction and supplementary fan media. There have been a few very good shared worlds online, from the venerable alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo to the contemporary Shadow Unit. But it really looks like the Mongoliad folks are looking to push the boat out here, taking things further than anyone before, and doing so in a way that is inherently web-like, impossible to translate to paper. I saw a demo of the Mongoliad over dinner the other night and it was some very exciting media. There's not much for public consumption as yet, but I'll keep you updated.
Source: Boing Boing | 25 May 2010 | 3:49 am EyeTV HD, Hi-Def Mac-Top-Box Supports iPad
Elgato’s EyeTV is a DVR for your Mac. The box sits between your various entertainment receivers and your computer and lets you watch and record anything. And we mean anything. Hook up your cable box, satellite receiver or even your VCR (you still have a VCR, right?) via component, composite or s-video and you can store it on your hard drive or watch live. The only thing it wont do is hook up to live TV broadcast over the air, but who watches those anymore? The box connects to the Mac via USB and rips video to H.264. It’s bus-powered, so no extra power cable is needed, and there’s an IR blaster port (complete with a remote control and an IR beamer) to let you change channel on the input devices direct from your Mac. Input runs up to 1080i (and 720p), as does output, and there’s one more trick. The box can simultaneously lay down iPhone and iPad-friendly video formats which you can either throw into iTunes to watch later, or stream direct to the device. The new part here is the iPad support, which will work when the companion EyeTV update hits the App Store (free upgrade). Yup, live TV on the iPad. Neat. How much? $200, which isn’t bad if you already have a Mac, and you don’t already own a TiVo. Available now. EyeTV HD [Elgato] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 25 May 2010 | 3:28 am Adobe Founders On Flash and Internet StandardsAn anonymous reader points out an 18-month-old interview with the founders of Adobe (and creators of PostScript) Charles Geschke and John Warnock, and highlights three interesting quotes from the book Masterminds of Programming that seem very timely now. "'It is so frustrating that this many years later we're still in an environment where someone says if you really want this to work you have to use Firefox. The whole point of the universality of the Web would be to not have those kind of distinctions, but we're still living with them. It's always fascinating to see how long it takes for certain pieces of historical antiquity to die away. The more you put them in the browsers you've codified them as eternal, and that's stupid. ... With Flash what we're trying to do is both beef it up and make it robust enough so that at least you can get one language that's platform-independent and will move from platform to platform without hitting you every time you turn around with different semantics. ... You can see why, to a certain extent, Apple and Microsoft view that as a challenge because they would like you to buy into their implementation of how the seamless integration with the Web goes. What we're saying is it really shouldn't matter. That cloud ought to be accessible by anybody's computer and through any sort of information sitting out on the Web."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 25 May 2010 | 3:26 am Dell enters the tablet PC market - BBC News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 25 May 2010 | 3:15 am String of Suicide Continues at Electronics Supplier in China - New York Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 25 May 2010 | 2:57 am CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook fixing privacy tools - USA Today
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 25 May 2010 | 2:38 am Microsoft Plans Shake-Up - Wall Street Journal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 25 May 2010 | 2:37 am Walmart Cuts iPhone 3GS Price To $97 - ITProPortal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 25 May 2010 | 2:23 am News International launches paid-for Times sitesLONDON, May 25 (Reuters) - News Corp's News International launched new paid-for websites for the Times of London and the Sunday Times on Tuesday, the first major consumer newspapers to charge readers...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 May 2010 | 2:22 am Intel releases new processors for laptops - BusinessWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 25 May 2010 | 2:20 am Phoenix Mars Lander officially dead - Register
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 25 May 2010 | 2:11 am Wives more likely than husbands to monitor e-mails, text messages when they suspect cheatingIt turns out wives are far more likely than their husbands to read their spouse's emails and texts when they suspect the other of cheating. The New York Daily News reports. According to London's Sunday...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 May 2010 | 2:05 am Space shuttle Atlantis on last leg of last missionThe Atlantis astronauts are getting their spaceship ready to come home. Atlantis is scheduled to land Wednesday morning in Florida. Commander Kenneth Ham and his crew will spend Tuesday...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 May 2010 | 2:00 am His Royal Highness the Duke of York Visits Autonomy HeadquartersSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 May 2010 | 2:00 am Memo to Steve Jobs: the IAd Is No Miracle Worker [Voices]By Kathryn Koegel, Contributor, Ad Age A veil of silence hangs over the advertising industry, as thick and unattractive as Scarlett O’Hara’s post-war recycled drape dress. At a mobile conference last week, the hot NON-topic was the iAd. Agency execs one after another deflected questions about Apple’s (AAPL) iAd platform and one after another began admitting it was all due to non-disclosure agreements. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 25 May 2010 | 1:59 am Pru chairman says confident of shareholder approvalHONG KONG, May 25 (Reuters) - Harvey McGrath, chairman of British insurer Prudential plc , said on Tuesday that he was confident of gaining shareholder approval for its proposed $35.5 billion takeover...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:59 am Virtual Infidelity Reader Survey: 56% Say Cheating More Likely In Second Life Than Other Online MediumsHere's the results of last week's reader survey on virtual infidelity, with 166 votes received. A majority of 56% believe that cheating is more likely to happen in Second Life, than other online medium...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:59 am Word of a Soldier’s Death Leaks on Facebook [Voices]By Noah Shachtman, Editor, Danger Room, Wired.com Everybody is dumping on Facebook right now – and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s non-apology apologies for giving away his customers’ personal information aren’t exactly helping matters. But in the military community, there’s an interesting twist on the Facebook-as-privacy-sieve debate. Turns out the names of soldiers dying in Afghanistan are sometimes appearing on Facebook before they’re officially released. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 25 May 2010 | 1:53 am Thai stocks fall 3 pct to 5-week lowBANGKOK, May 25 (Reuters) - Thailand's benchmark stock index fell 3 percent to its lowest in five weeks on Tuesday amid political risk at home plus global market weakness due to concerns about euro zone...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:53 am Apple says no to iPhone apps as political attack adsAn interesting read, the opinion piece in the LA Times on the Apple store's rejection of Malibu Republican congressional candidate Ari David's iPhone app. From Ari David's blog: A few weeks ago I hired...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:52 am Yahoo Buys Indonesian Mobile Internet Company (PC World)PC World - Yahoo has bought Koprol.com, an Indonesian mobile location-based-services Web company similar to Foursquare in the U.S.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 May 2010 | 1:50 am Germany suspends purchase of EADS helicopter-ministryBERLIN, May 25 (Reuters) - Germany's Defence Ministry has suspended the planned purchase of the EADS Tiger attack helicopter due to technical problems with the aircraft.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:47 am Adopted Children Face Anguish as Birth Parents Stalk Them on Facebook [Voices]By Victoria Macdonald, Writer, The Observer The natural parents of adopted children are increasingly using Facebook and other social networking sites to track down their offspring, flouting the usual controls and safeguards. Adoption agencies are reporting huge numbers of calls from “deeply distressed” adoptive parents whose children have been contacted out of the blue. Jonathan Pearce, chief executive of Adoption UK, said it was having to deal with the consequences of this “intrusive and unplanned communication”, and warned that it was becoming more difficult to guarantee confidentiality to adoptive parents and their children. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 25 May 2010 | 1:45 am iTee: T-shirt for iPadAfter pants for iPad, here comes T-shirt for iPad. [via Techeblog]Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:31 am UPDATE 1-Indonesia's Bukit Asam sees profit flat this yearJAKARTA, May 25 (Reuters) - Indonesian coal miner PT Tambang Batubara Bukit Asam Tbk on Tuesday said net profit is expected to remain flat this year while revenue is forecast to increase 5-10 percent...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:31 am Smokin' Skivvies Shoots - Marloes Horst for Myla Lingerie Does Dutch Women Proud (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) This shoot of Marloes Horst for Myla lingerie and swimwear is shockingly beautiful. Horst shows the kind of beauty you look at and think, "Do you actually exist?" But a big part of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:31 am Australia private equity tax ruling delayed againMELBOURNE, May 25 (Reuters) - Australia's tax office has delayed for the third time a final decision on taxing gains from private equity asset sales, after its draft rulings last year sent shockwaves through...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:27 am Facebook's 'Like' Button Makes Me Lonely [Voices]By Michael Bernstein, Researcher, MIT CSAIL As a researcher, I expect myself to make mistakes all the time. It’s sort of par for the course, and a great way to learn. You build little tests to try out social designs, learn, and move on. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 25 May 2010 | 1:24 am TABLE-Ypsomed Holding full year resultsMay 25 (Reuters) - 12 months to 31 Mar 2010 Group (in SFR millions unless otherwise stated)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:20 am Map Reduce your Inbox: Yahoo Mail is Fighting Spam with Big DataIs there a way to defeat spam? Late last week, the Yahoo Mail team shared news from an independent study that users of the Yahoo Mail receive significantly less spam messages in their email inbox than...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:18 am UPDATE 1-Providence Resources pulls out of Kinsale deal* Providence says Kinsale no longer represents opportunitySource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:15 am Hairy Crocheted Jewelry - Remnant by Mimic Necklaces Look Like Dreadlocks (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Hipsters and hippies alike will appreciate these handmade Remnant by Mimic necklaces. You can purchase a green, purple, and pink crocheted necklace with a fancy back-embroidered fabric...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:11 am The Grown-Up Galaxy Among Kids10 billion light-years away, a behemoth lurks. However, this mysterious galaxy is too old, putting a monkey wrench in the accepted model of galactic formation.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 May 2010 | 1:07 am Foxconn worker dies in China; 10th in a year (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 May 2010 | 1:01 am "Talking Art" Interactive InstallationIf a work of art could talk, what would it say? Right now visitors at the Gteborg Museum of Art are encouraged to give voice to selected works of art in the interactive installing "Talking Art". Upon...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 May 2010 | 1:01 am Sci-Fi Runway Shows - The Osman Yousefzada AW10 Collection Reminds Me of 'Star Trek' (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) As a 'Star Trek' fan, I can't help but appreciate a female version of Geordi La Forge's visor as seen in the Osman Yousefzada AW10 collection. Actually, if the show was still airing,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 May 2010 | 12:56 am Microsoft to shake up phone, Xbox unit: report (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 May 2010 | 12:51 am TCoder allows journalists to easily log press conferencesTCoder is an iPhone app that allows TV and radio journalists to easily log press conferences, speeches, etc. using their iPhone or iPod Touch. TCoder enables journalists to take notes during press conferences,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 25 May 2010 | 12:50 am Thunderstorms as Nature's Particle AcceleratorsForget the Large Hadron Collider, Mother Nature has her own version of an accelerator, created by unique conditions that sometimes occur during thunderstorms, some 40 kilometers above the surface of the Earth.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 25 May 2010 | 12:45 am Nokia, Yahoo Team Up on Mobile, But Few Care - Wired News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 25 May 2010 | 12:45 am Emergency Dispatcher Fired For Facebook Drug Jokekaptink writes "Dana Kuchler, a 21-year veteran of the West Allis' Dispatch Department, was fired from her job for making jokes on her Facebook page about taking drugs. She appealed to an arbitrator, claiming the Facebook post was a jok,e pointing out she had written 'ha' in it, and urine and hair samples tested negative for drugs. The arbitrator said she should be entitled to go back to work after a 30-day suspension, but the City of West Allis complained that was not appropriate. Is posting bad jokes on Facebook a justifiable reason to give someone the boot?"
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Source: Slashdot | 25 May 2010 | 12:43 am Yahoo! buys mobile phone networking firm Koprol (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 May 2010 | 12:24 am School laptop spy software 'exploitable from anywhere'Remember the school laptops set up to allow staff to spy on the kids at home? It turns out that the spy software used, Absolute Manage, has hard-coded crypto keys. This means that if you hack one client, you've hacked them all. [Freedom to Tinker]Source: Boing Boing | 24 May 2010 | 11:45 pm Google's Pac-Man Tribute: Bad for Business? - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 May 2010 | 11:39 pm Facebook told to set up warning system after new sex scam (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 May 2010 | 11:37 pm TechCrunch Disrupt Livestream: Over 1 million viewer minutes served
Another thing that was a huge success was our live streaming of the event. We’ve just received the day’s stats from broadcast partners, Livestream: over the course of the day we streamed over 1 million viewer minutes of video, a total of 87,873 visits by 31,033 unique viewers. Or to put it another way, for every person in the room, 21 were watching online. Unsurprisingly, the most viewed video was the Carol Bartz interview which has been watched by over 29,000 times at the time of writing. For those of you who missed the event (which kicks off again at 9am Eastern time, 6am Pacific), we’re showing all of the sessions again throughout the night at techcrunch.com/disrupt      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 11:20 pm Yahoo Acquires Geo-Location Service Koprol (Which Translates to Foursquare of Indonesia) [BoomTown]
If you can’t buy Foursquare–as Yahoo did not after aggressive efforts to do so–then…buy the Indonesian version of it! BoomTown has to be honest and say I have never heard of Koprol, a Jakarta-based social geo-location service that bears striking similarities the hot New York-based one Yahoo (YHOO) offered $100 million for recently to no result. But that’s just what Yahoo snapped up, announcing the purchase of the mobile-focused start-up for an undisclosed sum tonight. It is not clear what Yahoo intends to do with the technology from Koprol, but execs called it an emerging market play. And, indeed, Koprol could be used to bolster Yahoo “check-in” features globally, especially in Asia. Frankly, Koprol sounds more robust, innovative and fun than Foursquare. Yahoo already made another splashy mobile announcement today by unveiling a partnership deal with Finnish handset giant Nokia (NOK). Here is a video Yahoo posted on its Yodel Anecdotal blog with Kopral’s founders: And here’s the full Yahoo press release on the Koprol acquisition:
Source: All Things Digital | 24 May 2010 | 11:07 pm Microsoft Plans New Shake-Up [Voices]By Nick Wingfield, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is expected to shake up the management of its division focused on videogames, mobile phones and other devices, in the wake of increasingly bruising competition from Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOG) in the market for consumer devices, according to people familiar with the matter. The Redmond, Wash., software company could announce major organizational changes at its Entertainment & Devices Division as early as this week, those people said. The division includes Microsoft’s Xbox videogame business and Windows Phone, an operating system for mobile phones. The unit accounted for $1.67 billion in sales during the first three months of the year, or about 11 percent of Microsoft’s $14.5 billion in revenue during the period. One executive in the division, J Allard, the chief experience officer and chief technology officer of the group, is expected to leave that role following Microsoft’s recent decision to shut down a tablet PC development project known internally as Courier, that Mr. Allard was overseeing, people familiar with the matter said. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 24 May 2010 | 11:00 pm To Top Off A Busy Day, Yahoo Acquires Foursquare — Well, The Asian Foursquare
Koprol, based in Jakarta, Indonesia focuses on the “intersection of location, community expertise and mobile experiences.” With it, people share photos and reviews of locations using their mobile phones. And yes, it allows you to “check-in” to a location. This acquisition is interesting to say the least since Yahoo had been in discussions to buy Foursquare, the American Koprol. That purchase (which we urged Foursquare not to agree to) would have likely cost Yahoo north of $100 million. The terms of this deal were not disclosed, but you can be sure Yahoo got Koprol for far less than that. On the surface, this purchase seems to make sense with Yahoo’s apparent direction. With the Nokia deal in place, they seem to be going after emerging markets, such as Indonesia. And it’s a web app, so a smartphone isn’t needed. From the site:
That said, Koprol has apparently been extending beyond feature phones, as it today introduced a BlackBerry application. No word on if Koprol was welcomed to the Yahoo team by Bartz with a nice “pergi dr sini!“ [via Hunter Walk] Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 10:18 pm Top 10 Species of the Year AnnouncedThe top 10 species discovered in 2009 were announced. These species are all super bizarre from big-fanged minnows to carnivorous slugs.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 10:17 pm Accelerated Payment Technologies(TM) Introduced Following Sale of CAM Commerce Point-of-sale Software DivisionPLEASANT GROVE, Utah, May 25 /PRNewswire/ -- The sale of the CAM Commerce point-of-sale software division to Robertson Piper Software Group (RPSG) has opened the way for CAM's integrated payments division to establish an independent brand and an innovative business model focused on high quality relationship-based engagement for all of its point-of-sale partners, it was announced today. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100525/CL10077LOGO) With a new corporate identity, Accelerated Payment Technologies (ACCELERATED) remains a privately-held portfolio company of Great Hill Partners under the same leadership.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 May 2010 | 10:01 pm May 25, 2001: Towel Day Honors Hitchhiker Author AdamsAll Douglas Adams fans are encouraged to carry a towel with them for the day.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 10:00 pm Random Hacks of KindnessElizabeth Sabet writes "Google, Microsoft, NASA, The World Bank, and Yahoo! are unlikely partners, but they are bringing together the best and brightest in disaster relief management and the ever-growing hacker community in a progressive initiative called Random Hacks of Kindness. Its mission is to mobilize a world-wide community of technologists to solve real-world problems through technology. RHoK is gearing up for its first world-wide 'hackathon for humanity' on June 4-6, 2010. Following last year's inaugural event in Mountain View, California, which produced software solutions that were used on the ground during the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, the partners have decided to take the effort global. RHoK engages volunteer software engineers, independent hackers, and students from around the world in a marathon weekend of hacking events and coding competitions to develop software solutions for problems posed by subject-matter experts. This first global Hackathon will feature sponsored events in Washington DC, Sydney, Nairobi, Jakarta and Sao Paulo." Here's where to go for more details or to register for the DC event.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 May 2010 | 9:54 pm Google TV, And Optimizing The Web For The 10 Foot Experience
I asked that question during a press conference held immediately after Google TV was first unveiled. The answer, which primarily came from Google Senior Product Manager Rishi Chandra, is that we’ll probably see something akin to what happened with mobile sites, where websites create versions that are optimized for Google TV and similar products. But Chandra says that one key point is that sites won’t necessarily have to make any changes in order to give a reasonably good experience (in other words, there won’t be a chicken-and-egg problem where consumers won’t have content to look at). We’ve embedded the video of his response below. Here’s a rough transcript of his answer:
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen added to Chandra’s explanation, saying that it is “early in the evolution of how people will author for these devices, but that [Adobe] is committed to providing great tools” to help sites optimize and repurpose their content.
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 9:46 pm RAYSPAN Awarded Second Fundamental Metamaterial Air Interface PatentSAN DIEGO, May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- RAYSPAN Corporation, the world's leading innovator of metamaterial air interface solutions, announced today that it has been granted a second fundamental patent entitled "ANTENNAS, DEVICES AND SYSTEMS BASED ON METAMATERIAL STRUCTURES." The sweeping claims of this patent cover a wide range of metamaterial inventions from fundamental structures to RF components and communication systems. "RAYSPAN's leadership and breakthrough improvement in RF performance using our proprietary metamaterial solutions is testimony to the power of the technology we have developed and its ability to surpass all competing solutions in size, performance, and ease of integration," said Dr.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 May 2010 | 9:41 pm Obopay Names Deepak Chandnani PresidentREDWOOD CITY, Calif., and MUMBAI, India, May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Obopay, a leading mobile banking and payment provider, today announced the appointment of Deepak Chandnani as president of Obopay, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 May 2010 | 9:30 pm What Disney Princesses teach girls Source unknown. RELATED: What Disney Princes teach men about attracting women.
Update: Origin and/or related images in a 2009 post at contexts.org. Facebook’s interest in Android grows with Graph API support (Appolicious)Appolicious - Facebook put itself in a position to “take over the Web” with its Graph API, and it’s looking to do the same on a mobile level. At the Google I/O conference in San Francisco last week, Facebook revealed its plans to unleash the Graph API on Android developers, making it possible to have deep-linking for Facebook within Android apps.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 May 2010 | 9:21 pm Is the robotic X-37B a tool for spacewar, or a surveillance drone?
Boeing's X-37B is the unmanned successor to the space shuttle which began a stealthy debut mission last month. Is it a tool for space warcraft, or part of an American surveillance program? Amateur skywatchers have captured early glimpses, and plotted its orbit. Officials are maintaining silence on the craft's mission, but consensus in the press so far seems to be that it is an orbital spy vehicle.
More in the New York Times. (image: Artist's rendering from NASA/Boeing Phantom Works, 1999) Antarctica's "bleeding" glacier
Like a secular version of one of those crazy weeping Virgin Mary statues, Taylor Glacier in Antarctica* has been known for the blood-like liquid that pours from it since the "Blood Falls" was discovered in 1911. The eerie waterfall cascades into one of Antarctica's dry valleys—snowless, barren wastes where almost nothing lives. (I wrote about the dry valleys for a BoingBoing feature last month.) Aunt Flow—as I've just decided to call the Falls—gets its color from the dietary habits of microbes, which live in ancient seawater trapped beneath the glacier. They draw their energy from iron deposits leeched from the rocks the slowly moving glacier grinds to dust—leaving the water streaked rust red. Even more awesome: This is one of the few places on Earth exobiologists can easily study the kind of extreme life—creatures that survive and thrive in incredibly cold, sunlight-free environments—that might also live on other planets. *In between this and the frazil ice post, can you tell we got up above 90 F today in Minneapolis? And that I don't have air conditioning? Source: Boing Boing | 24 May 2010 | 9:04 pm Nigiri-shaped donutsJacques sez, "Here's something I saw in Bangkok last week that wasn't engulfed in flames. Some Thai Mister Donut restaurants are selling nigiri-shaped donuts. They call it 'sushido.' Each donut nigiri piece sells for 10 baht, which is 32 cents or so." Sushido (Thanks, Jacques!)
Source: Boing Boing | 24 May 2010 | 9:02 pm 10 Things Steve Jobs Won't Announce at Apple's WWDC - eWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 May 2010 | 9:01 pm Columbia council endorses IBM project (AP)AP - One week after city leaders hailed an incentive-laden effort to lure IBM and hundreds of new jobs to town, the project easily passed its first hurdle Monday night.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 May 2010 | 8:08 pm Citizen Scientists Help Explore the MoonPickens writes "NPR reports that NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is doing such a good job photographing every bit of the moon's surface that scientists can't keep up, so Oxford astrophysicist Chris Lintott is asking amateur astronomers to help review, measure, and classify tens of thousands of moon photos streaming to Earth using the website MoonZoo, where anyone can log on, get trained, and become a space explorer. 'We ask people to count the craters that they can see... and that tells us all sorts of things about the history and the age of that bit of surface,' says Lintott. Volunteers are also asked to identify boulders, measure the craters, and generally classify what is found in the images. If one person does the classification — even if they're an expert — then anything odd or interesting can be blamed on them. But with multiple independent classifications, the team can statistically calculate the confidence in the classification. That's a large part of the power of Moon Zoo. Lintott adds the British and American scientists heading up the LRO project have been randomly checking the amateur research being sent in and find it as good as you would get from an expert. 'There are a whole host of scientists... who are waiting for these results, who've already committed to using them in their own research.'"
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Source: Slashdot | 24 May 2010 | 8:05 pm Motorola Launches Next Generation of Mission Critical Terminals With the MTM5400 TETRA RadioSINGAPORE, May 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TETRA World Congress --The Enterprise Mobility Solutions business of Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT), the world's leading provider of mission critical communication solutions, today announced the launch of the first in its next generation of TETRA radios.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 May 2010 | 8:00 pm Motorola Announces New Software Platform to Improve Operational Efficiency of Mission Critical NetworksSINGAPORE, May 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TETRA WORLD CONGRESS -- Enterprise Mobility Solutions business of Motorola, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 May 2010 | 8:00 pm Slackware 13.1 ReleasedSeveral readers made sure we are aware that Slackware 13.1 release is out. Here's the list of mirrors. "Slackware 13.1 brings many updates and enhancements, among which you'll find two of the most advanced desktop environments available today: Xfce 4.6.1, a fast and lightweight but visually appealing and easy to use desktop environment, and KDE 4.4.3, a recent stable release of the new 4.4.x series of the award-winning KDE desktop environment."
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Source: Slashdot | 24 May 2010 | 7:09 pm Froyo coming to Droid in ‘the near future’Section: Communications, Cellphones, Web, Google
When Slashgear reached out to Motorola regarding an Android 2.2 update for the Droid they responded with:
Great news for Droid owners like me! Although I’m pretty sure that many carriers and manufacturers will follow in doing over-the-air updates for the majority of phones that will be receiving the update. Read [Slashgear ] Full Story » | Written by Hunter Clarke for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 May 2010 | 6:59 pm Privatisation of Hutchison Telecom International Becomes EffectiveHONG KONG, May 24 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- Hutchison Whampoa Limited and Hutchison Telecommunications International Limited ("HTIL") today jointly announced that further to their joint announcement yesterday, the privatisation of HTIL became effective on 25 May 2010 (Hong Kong time). Cautionary Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 May 2010 | 6:59 pm Toshiba Adds High Gain 50W GaN HEMT Power Amplifier for C-Band SATCOM ApplicationsANAHEIM, Calif., May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 May 2010 | 6:45 pm E3 2010: Hyperkin arranges a RetroN3 E3 debutFROM GAMERTELL - Hyperkin will be attending E3 2010, and bringing its RetroN3. Attendees can test out the retro console hybrid, which plays NES, SNES and Sega Genesis games. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 May 2010 | 6:37 pm OpenLink Derivatives Trading Survey Reveals 70% of Respondents Plan to Automate OTC Post-Trade ProcessesNEW YORK, May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- OpenLink Financial, Inc. ("OpenLink"), a leading provider of cross-asset trading, risk management and operations processing software, today released the results of a survey of senior operations professionals at investment firms involved in OTC derivatives trading.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 May 2010 | 6:30 pm HP Explains Why Printer Ink Is So ExpensiveCWmike writes "'There's a perception that [printer] ink is one of the most expensive substances in the world,' says Thom Brown, marketing manager at HP. Well, yeah. One might get that feeling walking out of a store having spent $35 for a single ink cartridge that appears to contain fewer fluid ounces of product than a Heinz ketchup packet. Brown was ready to explain. He presented a series of PowerPoint slides aptly titled 'Why is printer ink so expensive?' I was ready for answers. The key point in a nutshell: Ink technology is expensive, and you pay for reliability and image quality. 'These liquids are completely different from a technology standpoint,' Brown says, adding that users concerned about cost per page can buy 'XL' ink cartridges from HP that last two to three times longer. (Competitors do the same). The message: You get value for the money. No getting around it though: Ink is still expensive, particularly if you have to use that inkjet printer for black-and-white text pages."
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Source: Slashdot | 24 May 2010 | 6:16 pm Fake BP Twitter Account Draws Followers With Oil-Spill Satire [Voices]By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal A Twitter user with an account dubbed BPGlobalPR is posting satirical entries about the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico–and already has more than twice as many followers as BP America’s actual account. The BPGlobalPR account includes tweets such as “Doing our best to turn oil into oilinade. So far the stuff tastes TERRIBLE.” With posts such as “The good news: Mermaids are real. The bad news: They are now extinct. #bpcares,” the stream of tweets from the account is long on dark humor and subtle outrage at BP’s actions. It’s also peppered with responses to twitterers who did not know that the account was fake and were angered at the thought that an oil company would post content such as “If we had a dollar for every complaint about this oil spill, it wouldn’t compare to our current fortune. Oil is a lucrative industry!” The increasing popularity of the account–and the fact that a few people apparently think it could be real–speaks volumes about the public’s view of the oil company as the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico worsens. BP is struggling to cap the leaking well, which has been spewing at least 5,000 barrels of oil a day since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig April 20. Oil already has been coming ashore on Louisiana’s environmentally fragile coastline. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 24 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Animating a Blockbuster: How Pixar Built Toy Story 3From people to process to polished rendering, see inside Pixar's creative magic.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Making Cheetos: It Ain't Easy Being CheesyTurning a hunk of cornmeal into perfectly crunchy, knobby bright-orange Cheetos requires a fine-tuned industrial dance.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Launching a Shuttle: NASA Countdown to BlastoffNASA and its contractors must work their way through a massive checklist -- from payload readiness and an oxygen purge to weather conditions -- before they get the go-ahead to launch.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Relocating Prisoners: The Cross-Country Inmate TransferThe U.S. Marshals Service shuttles approximately 350,000 prisoners around the country annually. A Wired writer tags along to see how it's done.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 6:00 pm Shanghai Restoration Project Mines Chinese ElectronicaReleased in May, the Shanghai Restoration Project and NeochaEDGE's electronic-music compilation eXpo is tearing down China's sonic firewalls.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 5:47 pm Facebook is ready to change their privacy settings ‘as soon as possible’Section: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking  Our boy Marky has found himself neck deep in trouble as of late. The best thing to do would at this point would be to make some reassuring comments to make the 400 million Facebook users at ease over the whole privacy issue. Zuckerberg officially stated that Facebook’s privacy settings are “too complex”, and that the site will change these settings “as soon as possible”. Is it just me, or can you imagine Zuckerberg making this sort of a statement while scoffing at the users for their stupidity? In any event, Facebook is currently trying to change its ever-transient user experience by taking things a bit slower. Zuckerberg went on to state that “in the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use. If people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that’s more open and connected is a better world”.
Take your pick as to which of these five “principles” is actually true. Hint: it’s not the top four. Read [WashingtonPost] Full Story » | Written by Tarun Kunwar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 May 2010 | 5:42 pm Microsoft eases access to Outlook data (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - Microsoft revealed on Monday two open source projects intended to improve interoperability with Microsoft Outlook files and even enable easier migrations from Outlook.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 May 2010 | 5:25 pm What Happened To: The Gizmondo handheld game systemFROM GAMERTELL - The story of the Gizmondo is a long one full of crime as well. Here is a nicely condensed version of what went wrong with this handheld. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 May 2010 | 5:22 pm The Oil Spill: Anatomy of a Blowout (and How It Will Happen Again)Analysis of the final hours before the Deepwater Horizon explosion reveals a key safety step was ignored. And oil wells around the Gulf of Mexico may be repeating the mistake every day.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 5:22 pm Google opens up, divulges its ad commission rates (AP)AP - Google Inc. has finally revealed one of its financial secrets and spelled out how it splits revenue with other websites that show its online ads.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 May 2010 | 5:18 pm Google PAC-MAN Cost 4.8M Person-HoursThe folks at Rescue-Time, who make software that helps you (and companies) figure out how you spend your online time, did a modest calculation based on their user base and concluded that Google's playable PAC-MAN doodle cost the world over 4.8 million person-hours of productivity last Friday. "Google PAC-MAN consumed 4,819,352 hours of time (beyond the 33.6M daily man hours of attention that Google Search gets in a given day). $120,483,800 is the dollar tally, If the average Google user has a COST of $25/hr. (note that cost is 1.3 – 2.0 X pay rate). For that same cost, you could hire all 19,835 Google employees, from Larry and Sergey down to their janitors, and get 6 weeks of their time." Also, Google made the doodle permanent.
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Source: Slashdot | 24 May 2010 | 5:17 pm Save Dave: Twitter campaign rallies around Sirius XM’s Ron and Fez producer
There’s a campaign brewing on Twitter that really ought to be highlighted, if only because it shows the power (well, potential power) of the site. Dave McDonald, a producer on the Ron and Fez show on Sirius XM (and part-time inventor), needs a raise. He needs a raise because he has a growing family to support. But let’s not even bring up personal reasons. The man deserves a raise because he’s a fantastic asset to the Ron and Fez show and to Sirius XM as a whole. Without a raise, Dave will have to leave the show, which is incredibly disappointing. He’s a producer of the highest caliber—competent producers don’t grow on trees, otherwise terrestrial radio might not be as dead as it is today—and yet he earns little more than an intern. If this were 20 years ago we might see picket lines forming outside the Sirius XM studios in New York, but because this is 2010, fans have turned to Twitter to send Sirius XM management a very clear message: Save Dave, Pay The Man. The rallying symbol for the Twitter movement is the above illustration, created by the eminently talented dregman. It evokes memories of the iconic Hope poster of candidate Obama and the equally moving I’m With Coco campaign from earlier this year. While candidate Obama eventually became President Obama, Conan O’Brien can now look forward to a solid one-hour block of time on basic cable. There’s different degrees of success. The Save Dave campaign, after an initial period of waywardness and disorganization, seems to have found its footing under the superintendency of Mikey Boy, a longtime friend of the Ron and Fez show. Random, misguided tweets along the lines of “hey sirius, you jerks, pay dave or else!” gave way to standardized hashtags and work-friendly—and re-tweetable—slogans. These includes the titular tweet of the campaign in Save Dave as well as We Are Loud, We Are Proud, We Love ESD [for East Side Dave, his nickname]. The role of the Davepound should not be discounted. The Davepound, for those unaware, refers to McDonald’s more vociferous fans—analogous to co-host Fez Whatley’s Whatley Posse. The Davepound has bombarded Twitter with messages of support. Distinguished Davepound member Opie, of the Opie and Anthony show, also on Sirius XM, tweeted the following two days ago:
Completely agree with @DavePound :Sirius needs to give @eastsidedave a raise. He’s a valuable asset to the Ron & Fez Show. #savedaveless than a minute ago via web
This tweet has been re-tweeted numerous since then. With any luck, Sirius XM brass will have noticed it, and others like it. #savedave #esd #sirius #siriusxm #davepound #paydave are all part of the Save Dave campaign. Is the campaign working? That’s something only Sirius XM management knows for sure, but the trends look promising. Early last week, when McDonald announced that Thursday, May 27, would be his final day unless his requests were met, the mood on the show and its affiliated online outposts could be described as bleak. When asked today where he put McDonald’s chances of being given a much deserved raise, fellow producer Pepper Hicks (and winner of the 2009 CrunchGear Satellite Radio Award for Personality of the Year) put the odds at 6.5 out of 10. Given Hicks’ generally glass-half-empty disposition, I think we should feel confident with that number. Twitter’s a fine tool to let the world know that you’re eating lunch, but can it affect people’s lives? Can it help ensure the continuation of excellent, excellent radio and the stabilization of one man’s situation tenuous? Here’s hoping.
Source: CrunchGear | 24 May 2010 | 5:00 pm Openbook Creator Offers Privacy Design Solution for FacebookA programmer turned privacy activist suggests a simple slider as the way for Facebook to give users control over their info, and get out of the current firestorm of criticism.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 5:00 pm Planetary Bullies Make Astronomers Rethink the Habitable ZoneNew simulations of extrasolar planetary systems may mean the definition of "habitable" planets needs to be completely overhauled.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 4:50 pm Audio Precision Redefines Best In Class for Production TestLONDON, May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- AES Convention -- Audio Precision, the recognized standard in audio test and measurement, today introduced the APx515, a new two channel audio analyzer optimized for production test and starting at only $6200 in the US. Despite its low cost, APx515 still has excellent performance, with a typical THD+N of -106 dB, 24-bit FFTs, and 192k digital I/O.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 May 2010 | 4:42 pm News Panel: The Only Thing That Can Stop The iPad Is Apple
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, we had a panel entitled “Does The iPad Change Everything For News, Or Is It Still All About The Web?” The New York Times’ David Carr moderated the panel which included angel investor Ron Conway, Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau, and Bloomberg chief content officer Norm Pearlstine. The common theme? The only thing that can stop the iPad is Apple. While that may sound confusing (since, of course, Apple makes the iPad), everyone seemed to agree that Apple’s restrictions could end up hurting the device in the long run. Apple is in control right now because they’re the first to market with a killer product, but others will emulate them, reasons Pearlstine. He believes a lot of the content on these type of tablets will eventually be web-based rather than app-based (similar to an argument Google co-founder Sergey Brin made last week). Carr extended on that question, asking if maybe the iPad itself would just be a device where you consume content on the web rather than through apps?Hippeau says that’s up to Apple. Clearly they want to push people towards apps, behind their wall, he believes. The problem with this is that Apple doesn’t give back nearly as much data as having your own website would, Hippeau says. He thinks Apple will have to learn that media organizations live off of this data. “They’ll have to open it up more,” he says. Pearlstine agrees, saying that the key for traditional publishers is their lists of subscribers. More importantly, they have their payment information. With iPad apps, Apple has that information, and that will be a problem for a lot of media companies. “There will be other providers that won’t do it the Apple way,” he says. That, again, is implying that while Apple may have jump-started the industry, if they don’t open up a bit more, a competitor will beat them. Of course, that hasn’t happened with the iPhone yet. But Android is charging fast. Conway believes that Apple has a good lead for now though thanks to its “fantastic user interface.” He sees publishers flocking to it just like the music business did to the iPod/iTunes combo. “It’s a better model than free,” he says. Watch live streaming video from disrupt at livestream.com
     
Source: TechCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 4:37 pm AT&T to double ETFsSection: Communications, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
Read [PCWorld] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 May 2010 | 4:35 pm Twitter's Free Love Era Comes to an End: Time for Developers and Publishers to Pay Up [MediaMemo]
That’s a pretty significant change for the company, which has previously allowed anyone to do just about anything with its data, without asking for a cent. But that’s over, based on the new terms of service the company released today. The relevant excerpt:
That’s potentially a big deal. It’s also quite vague. And after talking to Twitter COO Dick Costolo this afternoon, I’m pretty sure that vagueness is intentional. Because I’m not sure Twitter knows exactly how it wants to proceed. But I did extract some specifics from Costolo:
Okay. But who, exactly, is going to have to pay up? Twitter’s terms aren’t clear, and while I went around and around with Costolo about this over the phone, I’m still not sure. Because I don’t think Twitter is sure. Start with the easy stuff: If there’s nothing else in your service beyond tweets and you’re selling ads against those tweets, you could be paying. “When we’re talking about cases where Twitter is clearly a key component of how a page is monetized, we need to have a commercial relationship,” Costolo said. That sure sounds like TweetUp, the new “AdSense for Tweets” product that launched today, despite what CEO Bill Gross told me this morning. And it doesn’t sound like Muck Rack, a Twitter aggregation site owned by Sawhorse Media–because there aren’t any ads on Muck Rack. But if owner Greg Galant decided to start running Google (GOOG) AdSense ads on his pages, he might end up paying. Except that Twitter says it’s not looking to find all the developers and publishers out there selling ads against the Twitter stream and tax them. Size matters, for one thing. “We’re not trying to prevent people from building businesses,” says Tony Wang, a Twitter business development executive who joined my call with Costolo today. “We’re saying if there’s this thing you’re doing, and you’re selling ads against it, and it’s really big, we want to participate in that.” So is Twitter only interested in really big publishers who use Twitter? Not necessarily. I asked Costolo about the Huffington Post, which has prominently embraced Twitter and uses it frequently to fill out its pages. Like this Twitter widget under a grisly story about a gored bullfighter (careful!). That’s probably fine, Costolo said. But what about Huffpo’s “Twitter editions,” which are primarily made up of tweets? I’ve asked Costolo about those in a follow-up email, but haven’t heard back yet. My gut: He’s not sure yet. Which is going to make for lots of interesting conversations in the coming weeks and months. UPDATE: Here’s Costolo’s response, via e-mail, on the Huffpo question. Not surprisingly, he heaps praise on a big Web site that helps Twitter increase its distribution. Though note he does mention plans to “monetize…together”:
It’s reasonable enough for Twitter to start trying to make money via companies that are making money via Twitter–it’s a move many outsiders have been calling for the company to make for some time. But it wouldn’t be Twitter if this was a straightforward process. Get ready for a bumpy ride. Source: All Things Digital | 24 May 2010 | 4:32 pm Facebook and Twitter Coming to Kindle–In Glorious Black and White [Digital Daily]
As a point release, it’s a nice little update, with a new password-protection feature that locks the device when it’s in sleep mode and social networking integration that allows for the sharing of book excerpts via Facebook and Twitter. But as an effort to make the Kindle more competitive with some newly arrived and formidable rivals, it falls a bit short. [Image credit: Ars Technica] Source: All Things Digital | 24 May 2010 | 4:28 pm Playstation Move could come out in July
What I’m hoping is that they really think that the E3 presentation will blow everyone away. If this report is true (LazyGamer notes that BT has been correct in this roundabout way before), I think it speaks well for the product. Even if it is a Wiimote clone, Sony has different ideas and different developers &mdsah; it could be a whole other world. We’ll be at E3, so you’ll know as soon as we do.
Source: CrunchGear | 24 May 2010 | 4:28 pm Motorola Announces Cash Tender Offers For Up To $400 Million of Certain of Its Outstanding Debt SecuritiesSCHAUMBURG, Ill., May 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Motorola, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 May 2010 | 4:26 pm Testosterone Makes People Suspicious of One AnotherTestosterone is linked to aggression, competition and social status. Now scientists have found that the hormone also reduces naive individuals’ confidence in others.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 4:25 pm IT Infrastructure As a House of Cardssnydeq writes "Deep End's Paul Venezia takes up a topic many IT pros face: 'When you've attached enough Band-Aids to the corpus that it's more bandage than not, isn't it time to start over?' The constant need to apply temporary fixes that end up becoming permanent are fast pushing many IT infrastructures beyond repair. Much of the blame falls on the products IT has to deal with. 'As processors have become faster and RAM cheaper, the software vendors have opted to dress up new versions in eye candy and limited-use features rather than concentrate on the foundation of the application. To their credit, code that was written to run on a Pentium-II 300MHz CPU will fly on modern hardware, but that code was also written to interact with a completely different set of OS dependencies, problems, and libraries. Yes, it might function on modern hardware, but not without more than a few Band-Aids to attach it to modern operating systems,' Venezia writes. And yet breaking this 'vicious cycle of bad ideas and worse implementations' by wiping the slate clean is no easy task. Especially when the need for kludges isn't apparent until the software is in the process of being implemented. 'Generally it's too late to change course at that point.'"
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Source: Slashdot | 24 May 2010 | 4:20 pm Gamertell Review: Harcos Zombie Blood energy drinkFROM GAMERTELL - Harcos’ Zombie Blood is the company’s best energy potion to date. It’s a refreshing, lime-flavored drink with no overbearing sweetness or aftertaste. Plus, it comes in a fake blood bag! Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 May 2010 | 4:18 pm Here’s a waterproof flashlight/video camera
Source: CrunchGear | 24 May 2010 | 4:00 pm Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show is GO!This young lady is eight years old and produces something she calls Sylvia’s Super-Awesome Maker Show. Today she made a Drawdio, a pencil that plays music when you draw things. Mark at BoingBoing found her at Maker Faire and she seems to really enjoy what she’s doing and she has great production values, which is a big plus in videoblogging.
Source: CrunchGear | 24 May 2010 | 3:57 pm Killzone 3 AnnouncedSony has officially taken the wraps off of Killzone 3, providing a ton of information about the third installment in the popular FPS franchise. The game will pick up where Killzone 2 left off, the levels will be much larger than in the past, and it will contain support for 3-D mode. Eurogamer has a detailed hands-on report about the game. Quoting: "Encounters have lost much of their predictability. More open design gives the AI more options, as well as freeing the player from the necessity of hide and peek. This means that's it's now a much more viable option to get up close and personal with the Higs, unleashing the multi-stage and context sensitive CQC kills with rifle butts and the trusty knife. ... For stage three of the hands-on we're introduced to perhaps the most exciting piece of new hardware — the jetpack. Initially only coming attached to a Helghan shock trooper, this insectoid assault platform is a four-winged, one-man affair, complete with a unlimited supply of ammunition for the attached large-calibre machine gun. Fighting them from the ground puts you in a precarious situation, putting you on the backfoot as you balance the necessity of looking upwards with the dangers of the sheer ice-cliffs around you. ... From the ground the pack will propel you upwards to around 15 feet, with the glide period afterward giving you the freedom to traverse sizable gaps. There's a booster, too — squirting you forward in short bursts if you're falling just short of an edge. Controls are light and agile, with the disconcerting verticality soon becoming second nature. "
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Source: Slashdot | 24 May 2010 | 3:49 pm HTC Desire to get Android 2.2 in late June?
Android 2.2 might already be rolling out to the Nexus One — but what about it’s nearly-identical European brother, the HTC Desire? If a random HTC customer service rep is to be believed — which we generally wouldn’t recommend — the Desire should be seeing Android 2.2 in all of its Flash-packin’, performance-boosting glory within the next month.
Our buds over at Phandroid spotted this gem on XDA-Dev. The tale, as its told: a grumpy customer decided to ring up HTC about his Desire’s inability to store applications on the SD card — an issue which is nullified in Android 2.2. The CS Rep initially refused to budge on any info, but Grumpy McCustomer kept on pushing. After a quick chat with his supervisor, the CS Rep dropped this litle tid-bit:
So, in other words: according to a forumgoer who purportedly spoke to a CS rep who allegedly had inside info on the HTC Desire’s update plans, Android 2.2 is coming to the Desire on June 23rd. Take it as you will, won’t you?
Source: MobileCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 3:45 pm Google Reader Latest To Kill IE6 Support; Also Axes Offline Support, But Simplifies Social
To be clear, IE6 isn’t the only browser getting the axe. Firefox 1.0 and 2.0, Safari 2.0 and 3.0, and even Chrome versions 1, 2, and 3 are all being pulled. “This will allow us to spend our time improving Reader instead of fixing issues with antiquated browsers,” Google writes. Again, this will happen June 1. That’s all understandable, less-so may be the removal of Gears support. Google announced it was killing off Gears support earlier this year mostly because HTML5 has similar capabilities. But those capabilities aren’t ready yet. So instead Google is telling users to download a few different third-party clients. Google is also opening up commenting a bit further. Until now, you had to be in a sharing group to be able to comment on a post. Now if you can see a shared item, you can comment on it. For users who share publicly, you’ll now get a choice between continuing to share publicly and allowing anyone to comment on your shared items, or switching to protected sharing. But, as I said, we are getting something in return. A better social experience. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 3:37 pm LiveIntent Turns Static Social Media Sharing Buttons Into Dynamic Ones
Launching today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference (the audience voted them up on stage), LiveIntent aims to help publishers create meaningful connections on social networks. What that means? Static buttons on e.g. The Huffington Post are inadequate, says LiveIntent, and thus they think those buttons should be dynamic instead. If a user would click, say, the Twitter button, a publisher could show multiple accounts, not just links to one page. It keeps the users on the site, and also gives them a way to follow multiple accounts in one click. Furthermore, you could potentially engage with the publisher inside the widget, so you don’t have to leave the page you were in to start a conversation. The startup’s technology is also smart enough to serve you different recommendations when you come back. All this is aimed to give publishers another way to increase pageviews, ad impressions, unique visitors, and ultimately, revenue. Second round presentation and expert feedback Business model: performance-based but also on CPM basis for ‘sponsored tweets’. “Consumers win, which means the advertisers win.” Q&A: Philip Kaplan: How much do you charge? Response: minimum bid of 50 cents, auction-based model. Philip Kaplan: We like it a lot. You may have the effect of MyBlogLog, where it would just take off. Jeffrey Bussgang: it’s a lead-gen effort, right? I like the model. Response: we agree, and it’s not only followers, but also information collection. Viral opportunity to deliver coupons. josh Williams: the analytics part, is that made available to the sponsor? Response: yes, we want to make publishers the experts. Watch live streaming video from disrupt at livestream.com
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 3:32 pm NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander Killed By Icecoondoggie writes "NASA officially ended its Phoenix Mars Lander operation today after a new image of the machine showed severe ice damage to its solar panels, and repeated attempts to contact the spacecraft had failed. 'Apparent changes in the shadows cast by the lander are consistent with predictions of how Phoenix could be damaged by harsh winter conditions. It was anticipated that the weight of a carbon-dioxide ice buildup could bend or break the lander's solar panels. [Michael Mellon of the University of Colorado] calculated hundreds of pounds of ice probably coated the lander in mid-winter.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 May 2010 | 3:31 pm TC Disrupt: Battlefield Session One Video And Winners
The entire session is in one monster video for now, along with deliberation and second round business plan discussion, so I’m providing times in case you want to skip directly to one presentation or another. If you just want to see Sacca crooning, go here. Here they are, in chronological order:  UJAM (4:30)A web-based toolset for generating music based on a theme, highly customizable by the user. They certainly got the audience choice award, and even persuaded one of the judges to sing a little ditty. They’re planning on doing a freemium model in which the basic tools are free but a more robust version will be for sale.  Off & Away (21:00)These guys work with hotels to put expensive, rarely-rented suites and such on the auction block. Off & Away has a pay-per-bid model that differs from other pay-bid sites like Swoopo by essentially giving auction losers their money back to spend on a hotel room, which was probably where the money was going anyway. If you travel a lot, checking this might be a nice habit to develop, but you shouldn’t gamble with company money, or so I’m told.  FluidDB (35:30)A more technical entry, FluidDB (FluidInfo is the company’s name) is a versatile data storage service that is completely open to writing, and the data comprising the DB will open to querying by pretty much anybody. You can tag data as private, of course, but the idea is a a “flat” database where you can collect and manipulate only the data you need and use or share it easily. I don’t really do it justice, not being a developer, so if it sounds interesting, go read the post.  Soluto (51:30)This very fluid and pretty presentation showed off a utility these guys have created that monitors your PC, analyzes when you are “frustrated,” and offers solutions. The cool bit is that the solutions are created by monitoring expert users’ PCs, and when a similar problem comes up, their response is added to a database — kill process, change startup settings, lower process priority, that kind of thing. The UI is very impressive, the best I’ve seen in a while. They’d have the “manual” version free and the “automatic” version (in development) for money (or get fees for pre-installs with vendors).  Betterment (1:05:45)It’s a replacement for your bank account, basically. They want to provide a simple (but robust) way of taking a sum of money, putting into something, and getting a return. You can easily split your investment between stocks and bonds, see what others in your age/income bracket are doing, and easily access the exact specifications of your portfolio. As the judges noted, this is a huge market and to capture only a fraction of a percentage of it would be a huge victory. And here’s the marathon video of the first session. The second part of the session (brief business plans and commentary from the top three) starts at about 1 hour, 20 minutes in. Watch live streaming video from disrupt at livestream.com
And the winners of this round? Soluto, UJAM, and Betterment! Congratulations to all.      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 3:30 pm iLuv has three new speaker systems for your enjoyment
There clearly isn’t enough computer speaker options available and so iLuv has three new solutions coming out. There’s a speaker bar, cube speakers, and even a mini clip speaker that features a clip for you know, clipping.
The new speakers are now available at i-luv’s site for $19.99, $34.99 and $39.99, respectfully.
Source: CrunchGear | 24 May 2010 | 3:29 pm Publish2 Wants To Disrupt The Associated Press With An Online News Exchange
Online news aggregation and curation startup Publish2 is today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference launching a new product dubbed Publish2 News Exchange, with the ambitious goal of disrupting the entire reason for being of The Associated Press. The AP being the cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and TV stations in the US, which operates a monster news and photo distribution network that non-contributing media organizations can subscribe to (for a hefty sum, evidently). Publish2 is taking a swing at the newswire mammoth – they un-lovingly call it an inefficient monopoly – by launching a platform that allows newspaper publishers and other media organizations tap the vast amount of quality content already available for free on the Web (we don’t mean to brag, but TechCrunch was one of the examples cited by the startup on stage). The startup realizes that the only way to disrupt the monster co-op is by offering a completely scalable substitute. Here’s basically what the company hopes the Publish2 News Exchange will do to the AP: ‘Craigslist it’. As in, kill the AP’s main income stream by offering an open, efficient alternative. And my educated guess is publishers are going to love this. Publish2 announced an initial $2.75 million round of financing back in March 2008. At the helm of the company we find Scott Karp, former Director of Digital Strategy for Atlantic Media and publisher of The Atlantic and current Editor & Publisher of Publishing 2.0, a widely-read industry blog. The startup can also fall back on a solid set of advisors (Stowe Boyd, Dan Gillmor, David Cohn etc.) and quite an impressive board of directors (which includes people like Robert Young, Kurt Johnson, Howard Weaver). Does Publish2 really have the potential to destroy the AP and help publishers survive and thrive thanks to free online content publishers? Time, as ever, will tell, but we can’t help but cheer for this one. Feedback and Q&A: Philip Kaplan: on one hand, feels like selling paint to the Titanic. Also not sure if I want newspapers to survive and thrive, as they’ve basically disrupted themselves. Josh Williams: Great presentation. Cutting out the middleman is very interesting. Chris Fralic: You explained the problem really well. The press will love it, as will the blogs. Jeffrey Bussgang: felt like selling vitamins to dinosaurs. Where’s your business when newspapers die? What’s the value proposition then? Response: the brands will survive on the Web, and we can play a role in that story as well. Jeffrey Bussgang: The question is how big the window of opportunity is. Second round presentation and expert feedback “We want to become the brand newspapers rely on, and when they fade, we want to be there to help them.” Publish2 wants to be in a position of trust and authority, that will ultimately be very profitable in an admittedly shrinking market. Scale is key. “It’s all about the value of news brands.” Philip Kaplan: are you charging for the content or is it advertising-based? Response: we’re not charging, but content owners can and then we take a transaction fee. If the content is free, we have the licensing fee model. Philip Kaplan: It makes sense, and that’s why we invited you back. Reducing the expense for publishers makes sense. But making an ad network out of it at some point, is going to prove very, very hard. Why not just sell the hell out of the content that you’re offering? Response: yes, that would be fantastic. Jeffrey Bussgang: How big are the budgets you’re going after? Response: $30-$40 million for the AP disruption part, and then there’s the international aspect. Chris Fralic: Shrinking AP’s market – what would you expect them to do? Response: ignore us in the beginning, then reduce their business to provide the same kind of value. By the time, they will, it’s going to be too late. We can stay way ahead of them. Watch live streaming video from disrupt at livestream.com
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 3:21 pm VideoGenie Aims To Help Brands And Consumers Connect Through Video
Launching at TechCrunch Disrupt this afternoon, VideoGenie aims to transform the way consumers and brands connect with each other using video. Text-based interaction between brands and consumers is inadequate, the startup claims, because a palette of 94 ASCII characters doesn’t provide people with enough flexibility to express the full spectrum of human emotion. A better way, they say, is videos. Videos that show people providing companies with a spontaneous, authentic testimonial that wasn’t pre-written by their brand marketers. Videos that show people enthusiastically reviewing a product or service. Videos that show real people expressing their opinion, in essence. VideoGenie automatically creates compilation videos that allow companies to solicit customer sentiment. Marketers can use the service for video-based testimonials, reviews, suggestions, and corporate communication. The three pillars of the product: easy and time-constraint video capturing, simple content management tools and single-click distribution. The startup’s technology provides marketers with an affordable, efficient way to create, collect, manage, and distribute compelling video content without the expense, training, and software traditionally required. VideoGenie is located in downtown Palo Alto, California, and has raised an undisclosed round of angel funding from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Daniel Zumino and Tomorrow Ventures. Feedback and Q&A: Philip Kaplan: Wow, Eric Schmidt! I’m wondering what the goal is of the whole thing, e.g. for Starbucks to sell more coffee, or to get more content for their website? Chris Fralic: Nice flow, good story. It’s very campaign-specific and ad-related. One of the things you need to address is the moderation and reviewing of videos, will you do that for the brands? Reaction: most brands know their messaging better than we ever will. We think we will leave it to them. Jeffrey Bussgang: Nice job, good pace. Interesting mechanism for capturing user feedback. Make it shareable and searchable. Reaction: working on both. Josh Williams: what is it going to be like for first-time visitors? The user experience has to be just right, that’s key. Watch live streaming video from disrupt at livestream.com
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 3:11 pm Carol Bartz Perfects The Art Of Swearing At TechCrunch Disrupt: The Video
By now, maybe you’ve read that Michael Arrington interviewed Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz this morning at TechCrunch Disrupt. Now you can hear it. And believe me, you’ll want to. Bartz had some interesting things to say about Facebook, Google, Apple, and even TechCrunch — hell, just about everyone but Yahoo (she mainly dodged those questions). But let’s be honest, you just want to hear the swearing. You can do so below. Watch live streaming video from disrupt at livestream.com
     
Source: TechCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 3:04 pm AppMakr adds features, now free for a limited time
The service, to recap, allows you create simple apps consisting of RSS feeds and other pieces of data. You create the app online and “publish” it either privately or with their help.
The company just launched a number of improvements including an “App Quality Index” which allows you to squeak through the Apple approval process as well as push notifications and photo galleries. You can create your app right here and publish it yourself. You’ll need to create an Apple Developer Account, but AppMakr will take care of most of the details. This offer is apparently for a limited time – they’re not announcing an end date – but, generally, it may be worth giving it a go if you’ve been thinking of creating a basic app.
Source: CrunchGear | 24 May 2010 | 3:02 pm Appletell reviews the Altec Lansing inMotion Compact speaker systemFROM APPLETELL - The Altec Lansing inMotion Compact speaker system sacrifices design and functionality for the lower price point, but the sound quality and portability compensate nicely. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 May 2010 | 3:01 pm Lame: The iPad is banned at Yankee Stadium
Bad news, Yankees fans. Apparently the winningest team in the history of sport doesn’t want you sitting inside the stadium with an iPad on your lap. That’s right: the iPad is banned at Yankee Stadium! So says a poster on one of the IGN messageboards. The Bronx is burning. The deal is that the poster attempted to walk into the stadium a few days ago, only to find the security guy saying, “Sorry, you can’t take that in here.” The poster was completely refused entry. No worry: the poster went over to another entrance, slipping the iPad inside her jacket. She was then able to enjoy the game just fine. The iPad ban is part of the stadium’s “no laptop” policy. I don’t know if you can argue with the security guard at the gate the nuance, the difference, if you will, between an iPad and a laptop. This, of course, leaves the question: why do you need to bring the iPad to a baseball game? Shouldn’t you be watching the game? Oh: maybe you want to check out the MLB App while there. That I can understand. But still, you’re asking for trouble. Just leave your magical and revolutionary device at home for the day. Problem solved!
Source: CrunchGear | 24 May 2010 | 3:00 pm The Phoenix Mars Lander is Dead, Goes to Silicon HeavenIt's official. After hundreds of flyovers by Mars Odyssey and overhead photographs taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Phoenix isn't going to rise from the dead.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 2:55 pm The BlackBerry 9800 Slider gets caught on video yet again, this time with AT&T branding
The BlackBerry 9800 Slider.. leaked? Preposterous! I can’t imagine such a thing happening. Except for that one time. Or that other time. Or any of those other times. And now, the leak to end all 9800 slider leaks: a video walk through of the handset, including BlackBerry OS 6.0.
Along with showing off a bunch of the tricks OS 6.0 has up its sleeve — multitouch support, the new WebKit, a brand new homescreen — it also pretty much cements one bit right off the bat: it’s coming to AT&T, as shown by the handset startup animation. [Source: BerryFix Via: CrackBerry]
Source: MobileCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 2:48 pm 2010: The year instant messaging finally died?
Has Twitter killed instant messaging? That’s one possible explanation for the sudden and precipitous drop in instant message traffic in the past few years. A recent study shows that Britons spent an entire 14 percent of the online-time instant messaging back in 2007. Now? That number is a paltry 5 percent. Is IM dead, dying, or merely going through growing pains? There’s a few reasons why IM may have fallen out out of fashion. One is that IM services are incompatible with each other. You can’t IM your friends in London with AIM becuase they use Windows Live Messenger. You can, however, send them a quick SMS and accomplish the same thing. Or, and this is something I noticed in the few years that I’ve been out of school, is that kids, rather than merely sending text IMs to each other, will often fire up Skype and have a conversation right there. Or, again, they’ll SMS each other. Notice a pattern here? It’s all SMS, baby, especially if you connect your Twitter account to your phone. One quick text, boom, everyone knows that you think the Lakers will win the championship this year rather than just one buddy on your long buddy list. And let’s not forget that Facebook has had a built-in IM system for a few years now. Too bad Facebook is losing users left and right these days… I haven’t regularly used IM since Spring, 2008. (Google Talk? Never used it. E-mail is not IM.) Granted, I stopped signing on because I was trying to avoid someone, such is my silliness.
Source: CrunchGear | 24 May 2010 | 2:30 pm Tesla-Powered Band Electrifies Maker FaireWired.com checks out ArcAttack's musical Tesla-coil performance at Maker Faire 2010.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 24 May 2010 | 2:20 pm 'Little Dog' Robot Ambles Over Rocks Like Nuttin'You've seen the Big Dog robot, right? The one from Boston Dynamics that walks walks, runs, climbs and carries heavy loads over uneven terrain. Try to push it over and it re-stabilizes itself almost exactly the way a person would. ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 2:18 pm Vaccine Could Help People Quit SmokingIt produces antibodies that stop nicotine from getting into the brain and triggering the pleasure-center chemical, dopamine.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 2:08 pm Surprising New Evidence For Asymmetry Between Matter And AntimatterUC Riverside physicists involved in the international research; new result brings us closer to understanding the universe and its originsWhy is there matter in the universe and not antimatter, its opposite?Physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, including John Ellison, a professor of physics at UC Riverside, have announced that they have found evidence for a significant violation of matter-antimatter symmetry in decays of B-mesons, which are exotic particles produced in high energy particle collisions.To arrive at their result, the research team, known as the DZero collaboration, analyzed billions of proton-antiproton collisions at Fermilab's Tevatron particle collider, and found a 1 percent excess of pairs of muons over pairs of antimuons produced in the decays of B-mesons.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 May 2010 | 2:08 pm Confirmed: Motorola i1 will be Boost Mobile’s first Android phone
Back at CTIA 2010, Motorola announced the world’s first rugged Android handset with iDEN push-to-talk functionality: the i1. At launch, Motorola was only willing to spill the beans on one carrier who’d be getting the handset: Sprint. We just unearthed some pretty irrefutable proof that someone else will be getting the i1: Boost Mobile. Yep — say hello to the first pre-paid Android handset in the US. Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
Source: CrunchGear | 24 May 2010 | 2:05 pm Team Directly Measures Body Temperatures Of Extinct VertebratesCould help scientists track paleoclimate, determine whether dinosaurs and other species were warm- or cold-bloodedWas Tyrannosaurus rex cold-blooded? Did birds regulate their body temperatures before or after they began to grow feathers? Why would evolution favor warm-bloodedness when it has such a high energy cost?Questions like these—about when, why, and how vertebrates stopped relying on external factors to regulate their body temperatures and began heating themselves internally—have long intrigued scientists.Now, a team led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has taken a critical step toward providing some answers.Reporting online this week in the early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they describe the first method for the direct measurement of the body temperatures of large extinct vertebrates—through the analysis of rare isotopes in the animals' bones, teeth, and eggshells."This is not quite like going back in time and sticking a thermometer up a creature's back end," says John Eiler, Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology and professor of geochemistry at Caltech. "But it's close."Studying the mechanisms of and changes in temperature regulation in long-extinct animals requires knowing what their body temperatures were in the first place. But the only way scientists have had to study temperature regulation in such creatures was to make inferences based on what is known about their anatomy, diet, or behavior. Until now.The technique the team has developed to measure body temperature in extinct vertebrates looks at the concentrations of two rare isotopes—carbon-13 and oxygen-18. "These heavy isotopes like to bond, or clump together, and this clumping effect is dependent on temperature," says Caltech postdoctoral scholar Robert Eagle, the paper's first author. "At very hot temperatures, you get a more random distribution of these isotopes, less clumping. At low temperatures, you find more clumping."In living creatures, this clumping can be seen in the crystalline lattice that makes up bioapatite—the mineral from which bone, tooth enamel, eggshells, and other hard body parts are formed. "When the mineral precipitates out of the blood—when you create bone or tooth enamel—the isotopic composition is frozen in place and can be preserved for millions of years," he adds.In addition, work in Eiler's lab has "defined the relationship between clumping and temperature," says Eagle, "allowing measurements of isotopes in the lab to be converted into body temperature." The method is accurate to within one or two degrees of difference."A big part of this paper is an exploration of what sorts of materials preserve temperature information, and where," notes Eiler.To do this, the team looked at bioapatite from animals whose form of body-temperature regulation is already known. "We know, for instance, that mammals are warm-blooded; all the bioapatite in their bodies was formed at or near 37 degrees centigrade," says Eagle.After showing proof of concept in living animals, the team looked at those no longer roaming the earth. For instance, the team was able to analyze mammoth teeth, finding body temperatures of between 37 and 38 degrees—exactly as expected.Going back even further in time, they looked at 12-million-year-old fossils from a relative of the rhinoceros, as well as from a cold-blooded member of the alligator family tree. "We found we could measure the expected body temperature of the rhino-like mammal, and could see a temperature difference between that and the alligator relative, of about 6 degrees centigrade," Eagle says.There are, however, limitations to this sort of temperature sleuthing. For one, the information that the technique provides is only a snapshot of a particular time and place, Eiler says, and not a lifelong record. "When we look at tooth enamel, for instance, what we get is a record of the head temperature of the animal when the tooth grew," he notes. "If you want to know what his big-toe temperature was two years later, too bad."And, of course, the technique relies on the quality of the fossils available for testing. While teeth tend to withstand the rigors of burial and time, eggshells are "fragile and prone to recrystallization during burial," says Eiler. Finding good specimens can be difficult.But the rewards are worth the effort. "The main reason to do this sort of work is because gigantic land animals are intrinsically fascinating," Eiler says. "We want to look at where warm-bloodedness emerged, and where it didn't emerge. And this technique will help us to reconstruct food webs. In the distant past, dinosaurs and other large animals were the crown of the food web; we'll be able to figure out how they went about their business."Now that they've pinned down an accurate paleothermometer, the research team has gone further back in time, and has begun looking at the body temperatures of vertebrates about whom less is known. "Before mammals and birds," says Eagle, "we have no good idea what physiology these ancient creatures had."First up? Dinosaurs, of course. "We're looking at eggshells and teeth to see whether the most conspicuous dinosaur species were warm- or cold-blooded," says Eiler.In addition, he says, the researchers would like to apply their approach to better understand some key evolutionary transitions."Take birds, for instance," Eiler says. "Were they warm-blooded before or after they started to fly? Before or after they developed feathers? We want to take small birds and track their body temperature through time to see what we can learn."Finally, they hope to get a peek at the paleoclimate, through the body-temperature data derived from ancient cold-blooded animals. "With this method, we can track changes in body temperature as a proxy for changes in air or water temperature."In addition to Eiler and Eagle, the other authors on the PNAS paper, "Body temperatures of modern and extinct vertebrates from 13C-18O bond abundances in bioapatite," are Edwin Schauble of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); Thomas Tütken of the Universität Bonn in Germany; Richard Hulbert of the Florida Museum of Natural History; and Aradhna Tripati, who has appointments at Caltech, UCLA, and the University of Cambridge.Their work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, and by a Caltech Chancellors Postdoctoral Scholarship.---Image Caption: The Caltech-led team first tested their method for directly measuring the body temperatures of vertebrates on teeth from living animals, such as elephants and sharks. Credit: Caltech/Robert EagleSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 May 2010 | 2:03 pm 3DMark releases DirectX 11 demoHave you ever wondered how they rate gaming laptops and desktops? Well, aside from a bunch of hand-waving and pseudo-intellectual discussion, most hardware reviewers depend on a few important benchmarks, including 3DMark 11. 3DMark traditionally pounds graphics processors and CPUs with all kinds of great stuff – I remember running 3DMark in 2001 and seeing some amazing graphics including a fun space battle scene that pre-dated Halo 2 – and then it spits out a number. FutureMark is releasing a new version of the software that will attack PCs with DirectX 11 graphics including new tessellation techniques to add amazing depth and detail to newer games. The new software will appear at Computex and will be available for use in Q3 2010. A free version will also be available for stay-at-home amateur hardware pundits.
Source: CrunchGear | 24 May 2010 | 2:00 pm How good is Flash on Android 2.2 (Froyo)?Section: Communications, Cellphones, Email / IM, Smartphones, Mobile
The Flash is a welcome addition for accessing content that other devices just can’t. The world of Flash gaming opens up and looks pretty good on the video. More online video is available to the Nexus One video but not all is rosy. “Not super smooth, but better than what we’ve seen.” The Flash player is available as an app, allowing Adobe to update as it see fits rather than waiting for Google to push out an update. The app is currently a beta, so keep that in mind in watching the video below. So what are the issues? The addition of Flash means that the 2.2 equipped Nexus One was slower than the iPhone to load pages. It did beat the Opera web browser of the HD2, though, so an advancement in speed has been made. The Flash content on a page, like advertising, when scrolled is rather jerky. It just isn’t a smooth experience. Tap and hold that should enlarge the video to full screen seemed intermittent at best. One more interesting occurrence in the video, part way through playing with 2.2, the phone put up a notification that the OS was “low on space” after downloading all that Flash content.
Read: [PocketNow] via [IntoMobile]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 May 2010 | 1:56 pm Confirmed: Motorola i1 will be Boost Mobile’s first Android phoneBack at CTIA 2010, Motorola announced the world’s first rugged Android handset with iDEN push-to-talk functionality: the i1. At launch, Motorola was only willing to spill the beans on one carrier who’d be getting the handset: Sprint. We just unearthed some pretty irrefutable proof that someone else will be getting the i1: Boost Mobile. Yep — say hello to the first pre-paid Android handset in the US. One of our oh-so-lovely tipsters just sent over the poster you see below, from which a few details can be gleaned: the Boost Mobile i1 will launch with retail exclusivity at Best Buy, and it’ll be Boost’s first Android phone. Better yet, it looks like Boost will be offering this handset with their standard $50 unlimited data/web/text plan — in other words, they’re not going to try to strap on some crazy smartphone tax. Given Boost’s current line-up, this will very, very easily be their best offering. There’s no word yet on pricing — but remember, there’s no contract here, which means no subsidies. The Boost BlackBerry 8330 costs $249.99 out the door, and it’s a pretty safe bet to wager that the i1 will cost at least as much.
Source: MobileCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 1:46 pm Research On Self-healing Concrete Yields Cost-effective System To Extend Life Of StructuresEfforts to extend the life of structures and reduce repair costs have led engineers to develop "smart materials" that have self-healing properties, but many of these new materials are difficult to commercialize.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 May 2010 | 1:45 pm Tropical Cyclone 2A Fading In SomaliaImage Caption: On May 22 at 22:29 UTC (6:29 p.m. EDT) NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder flying aboard the NASA Aqua satellite captured a small area of cold clouds (blue) associated the remnants of Bandu. Credit: NASA JPL, Ed OlsenSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 May 2010 | 1:42 pm Scientists To Study Oil Spill's Impact On Marine Food WebsShells from oysters, clams, and periwinkles hold clues about the ways and rates at which harmful compounds from the spill are being incorporated into the Gulf’s marine food webSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 May 2010 | 1:40 pm AKC Allows Mixed-Breed to Enter Dog ShowJust yesterday, my dog Drama and I were lounging around watching "What Not to Wear" on TLC. Drama propped himself under my neck, allowing me to use him as a pillow, providing maximum comfort and tons of sloppy doggy kisses. ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 1:03 pm Nile Delta Natural Gas Potential Is SignificantAn estimated 223 trillion cubic feet (tcf) (mean estimate) of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas are in the Nile Delta Basin Province, located in the Eastern Mediterranean region.Undiscovered, technically recoverable resources are those that have yet to be discovered, but if found, could be produced using currently available technology and industry practices.This is the first U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 May 2010 | 1:03 pm Woolly Mammoths, Rhinoceroses Were ToastyScientists devise an accurate method of determining the body temperatures for extinct animals, including woolly mammoths and eventually even dinosaurs.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 1:00 pm Study says 60% of Facebook users thinking about leavingSection: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking
Should Facebook be worried? Yes and no. When you roll out changes that piss off a large segment of your user base you darn well better be concerned, but at the same time it’s unlikely that Facebook will see 60% of its user base disappear. Too many people are addicted to the site and even those that aren’t are unlikely to leave if the majority of their friends don’t. Read [PCWorld] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 May 2010 | 12:49 pm Samsung pulls a Google and gives devs free Bada phones, confirms upcoming handsets
Google didn’t invent giving stuff away. Oprah did that. Google just made — or at least greatly popularized — the trend of companies giving their latest and greatest handsets to all the attendees of the developer events in hopes of spiking their interest. The latest company to pull a Google: Samsung. At a Developer Day in South Africa, the company just passed out Bada Wavesto everyone around. They also revealed a number of new details — some good, some.. not so good.
[Via PhoneReport]
Source: MobileCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 12:46 pm Can Bacteria Make You Smarter?Take another breath of that fresh air. It might make you smarter.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 May 2010 | 12:40 pm Big Chunk of Verizon Customers Would Switch to an iPhone
Plenty of Verizon customers would toss their Nokia, BlackBerry or HTC phones in exchange for an iPhone — if Apple ever delivers the coveted handset to their network. Seventeen percent of Verizon’s customers would upgrade to an iPhone given the opportunity, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty wrote in a research note, based on responses to the firm’s U.S. consumer iPhone survey. “There is substantial pent up iPhone demand within the Verizon installed base as 16.8 percent of Verizon subscribers said they are ‘very likely’ to purchase an iPhone if offered on the Verizon Network,” Huberty wrote, adding that this number is higher than the number of AT&T subscribers — 14.6 percent — extremely interested in the current iPhone. Ever since the iPhone debuted on AT&T in 2007, analysts and journalists have questioned when (not if) Apple will share the iPhone with Verizon. Speculation over the impact of a Verizon iPhone has gained momentum ever since The Wall Street Journal reported a rumor that Apple was producing a CDMA iPhone this fall. CDMA is the standard used by Verizon. In response to the rumor, AT&T’s CEO Ralph da la Vega said during an investor conference that his company was not fazed by the possibility of a Verizon iPhone. He explained that family plans and corporate plans constitute a large part of AT&T’s customer base, and it’s difficult to migrate multiple devices to a different carrier. Via Digital Daily See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 May 2010 | 12:24 pm Kindle for PC app now coming pre-installed on select Eee PC netbooks & notebooksSection: Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops, Netbooks, Gadgets / Other, ebooks  Asus and Amazon have teamed up, and moving forward you will be able to order select Asus notebooks and netbooks with the Amazon Kindle app for the PC pre-installed. The models that will be included in this promotion are the Eee PC 1005PE-MU27 netbook and the UL30A and the UL30VT notebooks. Sadly though, its just that, some otherwise free software that is going to be installed as default. And while this is most likely a good partnership for Asus and Amazon I can see some users upset that they now have another default app that they may or may not ever use. Its funny, I like Asus and the Eee, and I like Amazon, but still have a hard time seeing this as anything more than additional crap on my computer. Still I guess if you are not capable of installing software for some reason this may appeal to you. Otherwise, they are giving you something that is already available for free. Via [Engadget] Keep reading to check out the full press release…
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 24 May 2010 | 11:31 am Steve Jobs to Headline iPhone-Centric Apple Developer Conference
Apple this morning announced that CEO Steve Jobs will be emceeing the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on June 7 in San Francisco. Continuing his trend of doing one-to-one e-mail marketing for his $43 billion (revenue) company, Jobs himself helped tout the conference with a personal e-mail to a customer over the weekend. The developer’s conference attracts greater than usual attention because, for the past two years, Apple has used the venue to announce the latest version of its iPhone. Gizmodo may have spoiled the surprise this year by leaking what has been confirmed by Apple legal as a prototype of the fourth-generation iPhone. However, in an e-mail exchange with a customer over the weekend, Jobs said the event would still pack a punch. “I hope you have some good WWDC announcements to blow [Google] out of the water,” a customer wrote to Jobs on Saturday. “You won’t be disappointed,” the CEO responded, according to a report published on MacRumors.com. As usual, the keynote address will be held in the Moscone West conference center to kick off the five-day WWDC conference, which includes hands-on sessions for software developers to become familiar with iPhone OS 4 and Mac OS X. In addition to new iPhone hardware, Apple is expected to give further details on its next-generation mobile operating system, iPhone OS 4. The company in March previewed iPhone OS 4, which introduces support for multitasking and the ability to group apps in folders, among other features. Apple’s 5,000-seat WWDC 2010 event sold out in eight days. The conference is designed to recruit and educate developers supporting Apple’s iPhone OS and Mac OS platforms. The importance of WWDC continues to increase as Apple’s rivalry with Google becomes more fierce in the mobile space. Google last week held its sold-out Android developer conference, Google I/O, where executives spent a generous amount of time delivering potshots on Apple’s iPhone platform. “If Google didn’t act, we face a draconian future. One man, one company, one device would control our future,” Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering of Google, told attendees at the conference. “If you believe in openness and choice, welcome to Android.” See Also:
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 May 2010 | 11:02 am Steve Jobs to Headline iPhone-Centric Apple Developer ConferenceApple announces Steve Jobs will host its WWDC keynote on June 7. Over the weekend, Jobs e-mailed another customer saying Apple fans would not be disappointed by the conference.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 24 May 2010 | 11:00 am Odds Are 1-in-3 That A Mega-earthquake Will Hit The Northwest In The Next 50 YearsThe major earthquakes that devastated Chile earlier this year and which triggered the catastrophic Indonesian tsunami of 2004 are more than just a distinct possibility to strike the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States, scientists say.There is more than a one-in-three chance that it will happen within the next 50 years.New analyses by Oregon State University marine geologist Chris Goldfinger and his colleagues have provided fresh insights into the Northwest’s turbulent seismic history – where magnitude 8.2 (or higher) earthquakes have occurred 41 times during the past 10,000 years.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 May 2010 | 10:33 am What Genes Help Blossoms Last Longer?Image Caption: ARS plant physiologist Cai-Zhong Jiang is using virus-induced gene silencing—which shows up as white patches on these purple petunias—to determine the function of genes involved in how long a plant flowers.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 May 2010 | 9:54 am Government Threatens Takeover On Oil Spill EffortsImage Caption: Health, Safety and Environment workers place an oil containment boom on low areas of the beach that are affected by tide. The boom is placed in the low areas to prevent oil from getting into the nearby marsh when sea levels are at their highest. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Kelley.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 May 2010 | 9:30 am Official: HP Slate Will Run WebOS
Wong said that “HP will announce more details after the completion of the Palm acquisition at the end of July.” So far Digitimes offers no other details (the story is classed as a “snapshot”, and should be added to shortly), but the move to use WebOS on slates and phones is really an obvious one. After all, why buy Palm otherwise? Between Android, the iPad and now HP’s tablet plans, this newly-reinvigorated device category is white-hot. Apple has proved that people are willing to buy a simple, easy to use device that frees them from babysitting a full PC OS. HP clearly sees its mobile future as a vertical system, just like Apple’s, instead of just churning out commodity PC hardware for Microsoft to slap Windows into. The next stage of the computer’s evolution is well under way. HP Taiwan confirms plans for WebOS-based mobile devices [Digitimes] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 May 2010 | 9:07 am Male Antelopes Trick Females Into Extra Sex OpportunitiesScientists have caught male topi antelopes in the act of faking fear in front of females in heat as a way to improve their chances of having sex.The male antelopes, observed in southwest Kenya, send a false signal that a predator is nearby only when females in heat are in their territories.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 May 2010 | 8:46 am How to watch Hulu on Android 2.2
If you were a true Gleek, you’d have already fired up the browser, navigated over to Hulu, and found nothing but disappointment. You’ve been burned by licensing deals yet again. Sad face. So whaddaya do? Well, you lucky dawg, there is a way. Follow me, I will show you how. First up, open up your browser. Now, type “about:debug” (without the quotes, silly) and hit go. Click “Settings”, and scroll on down to the bottom to reveal the dastardly tricky “UAString”. This is where the plan gets really cunning: you now change your user agent string — the bit of info that tells a website what type of device you are running — to “Desktop”. From now on, Hulu (and every other website) will think you’re accessing it from — you guessed it — a desktop PC rather than a mobile device. Of course, there is a caveat: because Hulu thinks you are on a desktop PC, it will give you the desktop version of the site, rather than the mobile-optimized version. A small price to pay for those harmonies, right? Now, Hulu will probably cotton on to this pretty quick, so you best enjoy this while you can. [via Mashable]
Source: MobileCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 8:31 am How to Use an iPad on (Almost) Any Data Plan in the World
The iPad will be arriving at homes across the globe this Friday as Apple begins its international roll-out. Much has been made of AT&T’s excellent contract-free data plans in the United States, but is the rest of the world going to be so lucky? No. In some cases, you may be better off ignoring the iPad plans altogether and (literally) hacking together your own solution. AT&T offers cheap chunks of data (250 MB for $15), or a truly unlimited plan for just $30 a month. By contrast, many carriers in other countries are up to the usual telco tricks and offering contract-only plans, or “unlimited” data plans which slow bandwidth to a trickle after just a couple of gigabytes. I got a 64-GB iPad 3G shipped in by esteemed Wired New York Bureau Chief John C Abell, and it arrived last week. Official iPad plans have been detailed here in Spain, but as they are crazy-expensive and also not yet available, I rolled my own.
You don’t need to get fancy. I just lined up the AT&T micro SiIM that came in my iPad with the contacts on a pre-pay Vodafone card, marked the lines with a sharp knife and then took to it with scissors. Thus trimmed, I slid it into the iPad in its little aluminum tray and it was recognized immediately. Next up, making it work: In the United States, to sign up for data you just follow along inside the settings app, adding credit card details and picking your plan. Maybe, with the official international partners, this will happen elsewhere. For early-adopters and those who choose a different carrier, you’ll need to get a bit more nerdy. Don’t worry, though. It’s easy. All you need once your card has been activated (the salesperson should do this in-store) is to open up the Cellular Data section in settings and add the APN, the password and the username. These are all standard on a per-country and carrier basis: You don’t have your own password. For example, Vodafone Spain uses these settings:
Using those settings will get anything on the network, from an iPad to a MiFi (I have tried both). Why are the settings in the screenshot different? ITunes did it. A few days ago I was prompted to update my carrier settings while syncing with iTunes. Warily, I accepted and after a restart, the new settings were in place, my internet seemed faster and VodafoneES displayed properly in the menubar (previously it just said “voda…”). It seems that Apple is rolling out settings ahead of the launch that that may perhaps be automatic. You’ll find an amazing resource that lists pretty much every carrier in the world, along with settings, on Ross Barkman’s GPRS Info Page. And that’s it. It really was easy. Will I be switching to a proper iPad plan when my pre-paid moth runs out? I doubt it. I have to pay 50 pounds a month for this current data plan that gives me “unlimited” access without a contract. The iPad plan gives less data before you get slowed down and requires a contract. A contract without any subsidy on the hardware. No thanks. SIMCut sticker kit [SIMCut] Ross Barkman’s GPRS Info Page [Taniwha] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 May 2010 | 7:41 am How to Use an iPad on (Almost) Any Data Plan in the WorldInternational iPad users don't have the luxury of AT&T's flexible, pay-as-you-go data plan offered in the United States -- but they can roll their own data plans, with a little hacking.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 24 May 2010 | 7:41 am Samsung Wave now available in UK, France, and Germany
Samsung today announced that the Bada-powered Wave is now available in the UK and France (it has been available in Germany for about a week). UK Vodafone fans can grab the phone for free on a £25 per month plan, but no outright prices have yet been announced for the UK or France. However, eager Germans can pick it up for €429. In case you don’t know, the Wave is powered by a 1Ghz CPU, has a 3.3″ 480×800 AMOLED screen, 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash, and can record 720p Video. It also has GPS, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, and a mysterious OS. Current rumours say that it will make its way to North America in June, but not with who, or for how much. But in the mean time, you can grab a Beta SDK to start developing for the new OS. Just don’t expect to get rich from it, mmmkay? [via The Unwired View]
Source: MobileCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 7:27 am T-mobile pulls latest HD2 update due to lethal bugs
Different users have reported different issues ranging from a not-so-terrible reduction in battery life, to a much-more-serious bricking of the phone. So, if you’ve already downloaded the update, but were holding off for a special day in May to actually apply it, you’ve dodged a bullet. T-mobile are looking into the problem now, and will post an update to their update page when it’s available, but, if I were you, I’d probably wait for the eager guinea pigs to try the update out before you go and apply it, just to be sure. [via Boy Genius Report]
Source: MobileCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 6:42 am Flash kills browsing in Android 2.2 FroyoBrian at PocketNow posted a browser comparison video showing the iPhone, the Nexus One, and the HTC HD2 all viewing the same websites. He installed Froyo on the Nexus One and downloaded the Flash beta which allows him to run almost all Flash content. It’s really long.While I do enjoy a long video of a man playing with Android phones, 11 minutes worth of a man playing with phones (found after the jump) might be a bit tiring. However, the money shot comes at about 1:40 where you see some Flash games playing in the wild. I think the most interesting part of that part of the video is how close Flash games running on a good processer are to standard, natively written games. So fine, you say, things look great. Why not run Flash? Again, if you love Flash, go with God. It’s been a great platform for years. But you’re going to suffer a performance hit on mobile devices. It’s obviously a frustrating situation for all involved – Apple, Adobe, and us – and won’t change for a while. My problem with this whole argument is that it has become religious. Flash is seen as the martyr at the altar of freedom, which is absolutely untrue. Flash is a platform and Apple’s decision not to run it is understandable from many standpoints and is especially understandable from a business standpoint. But to pull a “Free as in freedom” card in this argument is a cop out and ignores the financial relationships driving these decisions. I assure you that while Adobe [hearts] Apple, they definitely don’t [heart] you or at least they’re not thinking of you in this equation.
Source: MobileCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 6:36 am Home Made Coffee for the of Price Restaurant Coffee: Illy IperEspresso
Capsule espresso machines have driven the price of proper home-made coffee down to (usually) under $100. The problem is we now have a razor-blade, or games-console model to deal with: the machines are dirt cheap, but you need to reload them with expensive (and environmentally nasty) capsules or pods. Illy, maker of some of the best espresso available, is in on the game, and has added a characteristically high price tag to the mix. The new Illy Y1 iperEspresso Machine, from coffee-machine maker Francis Francis costs $125 and, like all such machines, uses disposable, pre-dosed and tamped capsules containing the ground coffee. The consistency of these factory-made plugs is what gives you a perfect cup every time. In this case, the hot water is pushed into the grounds at a pressure of 19 Bars, or 276 PSI, and despite the huge base just seven spent pods can be contained within before you need to clean up. Water capacity is 24-ounces. And the capsules? When you buy the machine, you’ll also be signed up for a recurring monthly delivery of three packages of coffee. If bought separately, these cans cost $16 each for just 21 servings, or $0.76 per cup. To qualify for free shipping, you’ll need to spend over $75. That probably won’t be too hard. As handsome as this machine is, I’ll stay away. My local bars all serve great espresso from real machines, made by people who know what they’re doing. A cup costs only €0.90 (just over a dollar), and I get to take a break instead of slurping at my desk. Experience the next generation of espresso with iperEspresso [Illy via Uncrate] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 May 2010 | 6:31 am Blackberry Bold 9800 slider to ditch SurePress, more photos surface
So you’re probably not that amazed by the new batch of photos that have emerged over at The Berry Fix. However, the photographer behind this latest photo shoot does have some interesting news for y’all: the new slider won’t be using RIM’s trademark, annoying SurePress technology. For those not in the know, SurePress was RIM’s attempt at replicating the tactile feel of a physical keyboard on a touch-screen device by making the screen a big, clickable button. The technology débuted on the BlackBerry Storm, and wasn’t received well. The removal of SurePress from the 9800 could be to do with the fact that the slider already has a physical keyboard, so those that are truly fearful of The Touch needn’t ever use the on-screen keyboard, and thus don’t need the assurance of SureType. Don’t think that RIM have given up on SureType just yet. The device should be released on AT&T in June. [via SlashGear]
Source: MobileCrunch | 24 May 2010 | 6:27 am Flat Light: Ceci N’est Pas Une Lampe
Finn Magee’s Flat Light is a visual gag in the spirit if not the style of René Magritte. The printed poster is both a lamp and not a lamp: the $195 wall hanging actually lights up when you flick the switch thanks to a bank of LEDs within. Magee made it after wondering whether a picture of a lamp would be as effective in lending “an atmosphere of productivity and efficiency to [a] room” as a real lamp. Apparently it is. I asked the Lady what she thought, and for such a gimmicky piece, I was amazed to find she likes it. Not that I’m allowed to buy one: she says it would be fine in a hotel, but I am forbidden from having one in the house. I wonder what she’ll do when my R2D2 projector arrives? The Flat Light is on sale now, in a limited edition of 50. Flat Light [Moss via Oh Gizmo!] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 May 2010 | 5:19 am EVO 4G Hacked, Rooted Before Arriving in StoresGoogle’s gift to attendees of its I/O conference last week was the hot new HTC EVO 4G cellphone. One of the lucky giftees was developer Matthew Mastracci, who showed his gratitude by teaming up with two friends and hacking the hell out of the poor little EVO. A few hours later and the team had successfully rooted the phone, and “managed to get the standard su tool installed.” This means that they had root, or super-user access to the phone and its file system. This lets you do anything you like to it. Here’s the video: What does this mean for security? Not much. If you have physical access and a little time, you can hack pretty much any device. More interesting is the reminder that the new wave of smartphones - Android and iPhone - both use variants of the UNIX operating system under the hood, first developed way back in 1969. That these modern pocket miracles are running on an OS invented before I was born still kind of blows my mind. Root on an HTC EVO 4G! [Grack] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 May 2010 | 4:42 am IPhone 4G, Also Available in White?
Is this a white iPhone? The photos come from Chinese-language site Apple Pro, and have lit up speculation across rumor sites that Apple will have a white-faced version of its expected new iPhone 4G when launched next month. It makes some sense: the current iPhone comes with a choice of black or white backs, so why not offer a choice of faceplates, too? Apple may well do this, but I don’t think these photos have much to do with a real iPhone. They are either prototypes or – more likely – good old Chinese knock-offs. The biggest giveaway is the presence of screw holes in the base of the metal frame. Those were found in the Gizmodophone, but are not seen in the more recent, and better finished, iPhone 4G shown off by Vietnamese site Tinhte. Also, what’s going on with the extra slot above the phone earpiece? Is it real? Who knows. At least, though, there are some mysteries left for Apple to reveal at the expected iPhone 4G launch event on June iPhone 4G with his face black and white brothers [Apple Pro via Apple Insider] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 May 2010 | 4:02 am
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Anyone who was in the room today for the first day of 
Yahoo has had a busy day. Not only did they 
Last week at Google I/O, we got our 
When Froyo updates started rolling out to the public, it was no surprise that the first device supported was the Nexus One (it was Google’s first phone). But now, according to a quote from Slashgear, it seems that the Droid is not far behind in getting 2.2.
AT&T Wireless customers beware. As of June 1st the company’s early termination fee for smartphones will rise to a whopping $325. That’s double the old rate of $175. The fee hike will only apply to smartphones like the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm and Windows Mobile devices. AT&T hasn’t given a reason for the hike but some say it is related to the upcoming release of the next generation of iPhone. They are following in the footsteps of Verizon, who hiked their ETF to $350 late last year, triggering an investigation by the FCC. It’s well known that ETFs are meant to make up for the steep subsidies on cell phones, but are Verizon and AT&T going too far?
Amazon (AMZN) pledged to deliver its 
Back in January, Google 
We covered 
Be careful what you wish for, says the old saying. That axiom may be proving true based on a new video comparing Android 2.2 running on a Nexus One, a HTC HD2 using Opera and an iPhone 3GS running beta 4.0 software. The result might surprise you.
According to a recently released study, at least 60% of all Facebook members are considering quitting following the companies recently revised privacy policy, which forces them to make certain parts of their profiles public. The policy has drawn sharp criticism by many who feel Facebook has no right taking control of its users’ data. Many are also frustrated with the complexity of the privacy tools the site provides. The anger is so strong that a “Quit Facebook Day” has been organized.
So you’ve just updated your shiny Nexus One to 
To all those Samsung enthusiasts living in Europe: this one’s for you.
