Closing the Digital Frontier [Voices]

By Michael Hirschorn, Contributing Editor, Atlantic

But now, it seems, things are changing all over again. The shift of the digital frontier from the Web, where the browser ruled supreme, to the smart phone, where the app and the pricing plan now hold sway, signals a radical shift from openness to a degree of closed-ness that would have been remarkable even before 1995. In the U.S., there are only three major cell-phone networks, a handful of smart-phone makers, and just one Apple, a company that has spent the entire Internet era fighting the idea of open (as anyone who has tried to move legally purchased digital downloads among devices can attest).

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:20 am

Why I Sold Zappos [Voices]

By Tony Hsieh, CEO, Zappos.com

The first time Amazon.com (AMZN) tried to buy Zappos, we said no without even thinking.

It was the summer of 2005, and Zappos, the start-up into which I’d poured the past five years of my life (and almost all of my money), finally seemed to be on the right track.

Zappos sells shoes and apparel online, but what distinguished us from our competitors was that we’d put our company culture above all else.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:16 am

'Back to Future,' 'Jurassic Park' to become games (AP)

AP - Telltale Games is going back in time for a new series of video games.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:06 am

You, the D.J.: Online Music Moves to The Cloud. [Voices]

By Sasha Frere-Jones, Contributor, New Yorker

No one knows what the future of the music business will look like, but the near future of listening to music looks a lot like 1960. People will listen, for free, to music that comes out of a stationary box that sits indoors. They’ll listen to music that comes from an object that fits in the hand, and they’ll listen to music in the car.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:05 am

Google Calendar Caught In An Infinite Loop For Some Users

Looks like a subset of Google Calendar users are running into the same issue when trying to load the service this morning. Based on a flurry of complaints vented on Twitter, it looks like the service gets caught in an infinite loop and keeps reloading / redirecting for some users, regardless of which browser they use.

From what we can gather, also from the Google Calendar Help forum, clearing cookies seems to fix things (but yelling doesn’t).

Google Calendar has been plagued with downtime for an extended period of time last April, and again in May. Does that mean we now get a monthly appointment with the FAIL?

Source: TechCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:00 am

Seven reasons to care about SQL Server 2008 R2 (InfoWorld)

InfoWorld - With Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft begins to fully realize its vision of SQL Server as an information platform and not "just" a database.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:00 am

VMware, Novell partner on Linux, virtualization (InfoWorld)

InfoWorld - VMware will distribute and support Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server OS and also bundle the Linux variant with software appliances, under an arrangement between virtualization provider VMware and Novell being announced on Wednesday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:00 am

Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes on Competition from Apple, Netflix, Nintendo, and Redbox [Voices]

By Austin Carr, Writer, Fast Company

Blockbuster has been taking lots of flack for the company’s poor earnings, shareholder in-fighting, and inability to combat the success of Netflix and Redbox. Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes, whose brash style we recently analyzed, spoke with us about what he is doing to turn the struggling video-rental giant around. Part I of our interview focused on Keyes’s views on the board of directors battle with Greg Meyer.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:50 am

EU court rejects cell phone cap challenge

The European Union's highest court has rejected a challenge by four British cell phone companies to a Europe-wide price cap on fees for using a phone abroad. Business Week reports. Vodafone, Telefonica...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:47 am

Panasonic starts taking orders for its 152-inch, 4K plasma 3D TV

Just yesterday, we reported about Panasonic’s plan to start selling two 3D plasma TVs (a 42- and a 46-inch model) on the Japanese market next month. And today, the same company announced [press release in English] it will start accepting orders for another batch of three new 3D plasma TVs on July 1. Targeted at “professional users”, these TVs are bigger. Much bigger.

The lineup consists of a 85-, a 103-, and even a 152-inch monster screen (the TH-152UX1). The latter is, according to Panasonic, the world’s largest 4K 3D plasma TV. The company says it’s large enough to display life-size images of people.

Technically, buyers will get 4,096 x 2,160 pixels for the biggest model (full HD for the smaller ones), a native contrast ratio of 5,000,000:1, and two HDMI ports (four in the case of the smaller screens). The 152-inch TV weighs a whopping 590kg (almost double the weight of the smaller models combined) and is sized at an impressive 3,600×1,980×149.5mm.

Panasonic says they expect the TVs to ship both in Japan and the US in the fall, followed by other markets “soon” after. No word on prices yet.

Source: CrunchGear | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:41 am

Gallery: Digitizing the past and present at the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress has nearly 150 million items in its collection, including at least 21 million books, 5 million maps, 12.5 million photos and 100,000 posters. The largest library in the world, it pioneers both preservation of the oldest artifacts and digitization of the most recent--so that all of it remains available to future generations.

I recently took a tour of two LoC departments that exemplify this mission: the Preservation Research and Testing Division in Washington, D.C., and the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Va.

The library's preservation specialists use the latest technology to study and scan ancient books, maps and other historical artifacts.

One process, called scanning electron microscopy, allows them to create elemental maps of manuscripts, identifying the chemical nature of inks and pigments, or the paper itself. Imperceptible changes made by artists appear plain as day when viewed using x-rays.

X-rays, however, aren't easy to work around. One new technique, hyperspectral imaging, offers similarly revelatory results in the darkroom: ultra-high resolution scans of documents, imaged under sharply restricted wavelengths of light, show details denied to the naked eye. Viewed at sharp angles, old documents even reveal data about the woodblocks used to impress them onto the page.

It's not all about moldy maps and tomes, either: thanks to the poor quality of consumer media, techniques are already being developed to recover information from damaged examples. Researchers already understand, for example, why using sticky labels increases the likelihood of failure in CDs and DVDs. (LightScribe etching has no apparent negative effects). So when the work of today's unheralded geniuses end up as priceless, rotting museum pieces, the preservers will be ready.

An ancient book presents the typical problem for archivists: how to better understand something that may be destroyed simply by the act of examining it? Researchers have adopted policies which forbid sacrificing part of an item in the hope of learning more about it.

The LoC's Jennifer Wade scans a centuries-old but well-preserved copy of Platina's The Lives of the Popes. "We can map the elements, the chemical components," Wade said. "We can simulate changes in heat, cold, and humidity. [But] all we do is provide information about treatment. Others make the restoration decisions."

Fenella France, a research chemist with the Preservation Research and Testing Division, uses a 39 megapixel camera to take high-resolution images of documents ranging from renaissance-era maps to American state papers.

"We don't filter at the camera, we illuminate with small wavelengths," Fenella said. "We're creating a reference set of samples. We can't take samples of the documents themselves--it's just not going to happen"

This technique creates a set of images like a 'stack of cards,' all identically framed but revealing a different spectral face of the subject.

On the plan for the city of Washington designed in 1791 by Pierre L'Enfant, a hidden street plan emerges under IR light. A design for a circle emerges on 16th and K.

It's incredible, it's humbling. It might be 6 p.m. and I'll be exhausted but I think, 'I can't complain--I'm working with the Gettysburg Address!'"

The Gettysburg Address exists on her computer as 8 different documents, each representing a different waveband in the visible spectrum. But only some show the mysterious fingerprint residue that may be Lincoln's own.

"In the next 5-10 years, I wouldn't be surprised if they could pull residual genetic information from the documents. [This is why] one of our foci is making sure that we don't interfere with future research."

One machine used to examine the book is an x-ray fluorescence spectrometer. "The clasp's corroding, degrading, so we're trying to figure out exactly what the corrosion material is," said Wade. "What is it caused by? What could stop it? Interpretation is important."

 

Among the finds: tracings of an earlier document on a Marco Polo map that dates to 1480. Lost text, revealing the cartographer, on 1516's Carta Marina. James Madison's debate papers, it turns out, contain hidden revisions.

"If it's fragile, even researchers have trouble with it," France said."I want to make it acessible."

Hansen stands by a collection of badly-damaged audio recordings that may yet be recoverable using new technology: "You can learn about a culture from how it builds and stores things."

A visitor stands before the Waldseemüller world map.

Fenella France stands beside the unique, 400-liter environmental chamber used to publicly house the map. Hurricane-proof glass and a high-tech aluminum enclosure ensure that it is kept at the perfect temperature and humidity; tests had to be performed to ensure the weight would not pose a structural problem for the Library.

"We're pretty much know that the Vinland Map contains titanium dioxide in a form that didn't exist until modern times."
- Eric Hansen

Printed by Martin Waldseemüller in 1507, the Universalis Cosmographia was the first world map to use the name "America" to identify the new world. The only copy of it is at the Library of Congress.

Far fom the bustle and majesty of Capitol Hill, a former nuclear bunker has become home to an unprecedented effort to catalog the nation's creative works. And while the media is more recent than that dealt with in D.C's basement labs, plenty of technical challenges remain.

The National Audio Visual Conservation Center, near Culpeper, Virginia, once contained billions in cash, squirrelled away to kickstart the economy in the event of an atomic apocalypse. Beautifully renovated, it now has 175,000 square feet of offices and laboratories, 135,000 square feet of collections storage, and 55,000 square feet dedicated to storing dangerous nitrate film in optimal conditions. There are more than a million films, television shows, DVDs and games already in its collection.

And it grows, day in, day out. Delivered to loading docks, thousands of items make their way through processing areas until finding a permanent home in the vaults.

Gregory Lukow, chief of the motion picture, broadcasting and recorded sound division at the campus, said that it was staffed by about 100 techs, engineers and other workers. Many items are digitized to ensure their preservation, and to allow researchers to view them remotely in D.C reading rooms. They also host public screenings of classic movies at the in-house cinema.

As the copyright office did not register celluloid prints until 1912, early movie makers created prints of the entire reel on opaque photographic paper. "It's an iconic image in America cinema, that cowboy shooting his gun at the camera, at the audience, at the end of the Great Train Robbery," said Gregory Lukow. "The quality of prints recovered from the paper is shockingly good."

Most of the collections arrive via the copyright registration process. Though works receive copyright protection at the moment of creation, registration provides more legal options in court disputes, ensuring what Lukow called "a tidal wave of material" for the campus to process. But a lot of the material is old -- and not all of it is in good nick.

"The late 1970s is one of the worst times for video longevity," Lukow said. "Magnetic tape is our largest preservation problem."

The distinctive round-rect casing of RCA Selectavision disks was briefly commonplace in the U.S. Now, the analog video format is a rarity.

There is an entire room at the campus dedicated to rewinding things. Almost every room, however, has cutting facilities of one kind or another.

"We don't want videotape coming in in 5 or 10 years time. Magnetic media is a losing proposition"
- Gregory Lukow

The Tony Schwartz collection has an astounding number of field recordings of commercials and other publicly-broadcast media. Passed to the Library after Schwartz's death in 2008, the archive currently fills several large walls. "It's immense," said the Library's Matt Barton. "Thousands of reels of tape, film, video. And I don't know how much correspondence." Schwartz is famous to many as the creator of the Daisy Cutter campaign ad.

Matt Barton of the Library of Congress's National Audio Visual Conservation Center.

Not everything that the Library of Congress uses to examine its collections is high-tech.

IRENE--image, reconstruct, erase noise, etcetera--is a system that creates a high-resolution digital map of a record's surface without touching it. Recordings on warped and damaged vinyl can be recovered and restored, then played back by a computer program that emulates the movements of a stylus passing over the modeled grooves. Some records, however, are too badly damaged even for IRENE.

Banks of reel-to-reel tape machines stand in one of the conservation center's digitization rooms. Nearby, a robot-operated VCR works through dozens of tapes automatically.

A small museum is set aside at the campus for the most beautiful film and broadcasting equipment in its stores. But it's not just for show: old media often needs old equipment to play it. The LoC has little interest in DRM, due to the inherent likelihood that decryption methods will fail or fade away as time passes. "We don't wan't to have to hack anything," Lukow said.

Michael Hinton, a staffer at the Library of Congress' NAVCS, works in a spartan room housing an enormous film-processing machine.

Source: Boing Boing | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:36 am

10 Things Microsoft Must Do to Succeed on the Web - eWeek

TG Daily

10 Things Microsoft Must Do to Succeed on the Web eWeek News Analysis: Microsoft is best known for its software, but as more and more companies and consumers move to the Web to be productive, Microsoft must be prepared to meet them. To do so, Microsoft must develop a comprehensive Web strategy. ... How to Make Sense of Microsoft's Multiple Mobile Operating SystemsPC World More Windows Phone Developer NewsLiveSide Microsoft Touts Windows Phone 7's Business FeaturesChannelWeb Register -Top Tech News -NetworkWorld.com all 493 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:29 am

Apple locks out competitive advertising - Register

Reuters India

Apple locks out competitive advertising Register Apple has tweaked its developer terms and conditions to explicitly lock out in-application advertising services that might compete with its own iAd service. The new terms, picked up by All Things Digital, ... Analysis: Apple turns up the heat in Google ads face-offReuters Apple stems Google's ad ambitionsFortune Apple's modified iOS terms allow outside advertisers, limit AdMobApple Insider eWeek -San Francisco Chronicle -Mediapost.com all 186 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:27 am

Don’t Buy The HTC EVO, It Is A Seriously Flawed Device

Let’s start things off with a disclaimer – I love Android phones. Last year I left the iPhone and switched to Android largely because of the amazing usefulness of Google Voice, and only Android devices truly let you take over your phone with a Google Voice app and have the perfect experience. I have extensively tested nearly all Android phones to date.

Around TechCrunch I’m the die hard Android Fan (Jason Kincaid is a close second). MG Siegler irrationally loves the iPhone and it has become an important fashion accessory and self confidence crutch in his San Francisco hipster lifestyle. I’m pretty sure Apple could remove the iPhone’s ability to make calls entirely and MG would still find a way to love it. You can read his review of iPhone 4 here. Summary: “It’s Awesome.”

I was happy to use the TMobile myTouch when I first left the iPhone. When the Droid launched it was a serious step up, and the fact that it’s on Verizon doesn’t hurt either. But it wasn’t until the Nexus One that I began to think that Android phones could stand toe to toe with the iPhone even without the Google Voice boost.

Nexus One uses the Snapdragon 1 GHz core processor, which just rocks. The device is slim and has decent battery life. And it’s a clean install of Android with no messy additional carrier or OEM software to muck everything up. The phone, launched in January, is now ancient by mobile product cycle standards. But it is aging very gracefully.

When MG reviewed the new HTC EVO, which is now selling out in the U.S., I wasn’t surprised he gave it a thumbs down. The device was too big in his opinion, the software too flaky. And the battery life isn’t just bad, it’s 90′s laptop bad. You need to be near a power source at all times.

But the commenters came at him anyway, attacking so viciously that they were actually starting to act like the evil twins of rabid Apple fanboys. “Android Fanboys Have Arrived,” quipped MG.

Well, I’m an Android Fanboy, and I’m telling you not to buy this device. The battery life is abysmal – MobileCrunch calls it a “dealbreaker” and I agree. Yes you can do a few things to get a little extra time out of it, but this device routinely runs out of power while sitting on standby overnight next to my bed. You aren’t just charging this once a day. Or twice a day. You need to be thinking about your next power fix just about any time you are using it. I keep chargers at home, in my office, in my car, and an extra one to suck power from my laptop. That keeps it going, but it isn’t fun.

And it’s more than that. The HTC Sense user interface and all the extra HTC and Sprint software on this device just makes it a joke for anyone that wants to fully control and customize their device. You can get rid of or at least turn off much of it, but it’s a pain to do that. And worse, you can’t upgrade the Android OS to new releases until HTC and Sprint are ready to let you do that. See Gizmodo for a full analysis of the problem.

And all this software trying to work together and in layers really does result in lots of bugs – particularly with photos. Quite often they fail to save and you have to reboot the device.

If you want an Android phone right now, get a Nexus One. In January I believed it was by far the best phone on the market. The new iPhone 4, though, is clearly superior. I’d rather see you buy that device and deal with the Apple dictatorship than get a phone you aren’t going to be happy with. Or wait a few months for a better Android phone. It won’t take long for something even better to come along.

And if you insist on getting an EVO, I highly recommend you pick up a second phone, perhaps a $25 prepaid type device, so that you can actually make phone calls when your EVO’s battery dies.

MG might be the most loyal Apple Fanboy in the world, but his review of the EVO was dead on.

Source: TechCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:18 am

Sony releases two new DSLR cameras - Macworld

Geeky gadgets

Sony releases two new DSLR cameras Macworld Sony has announced two new additions to its Alpha line of digital SLR cameras: the A290 and the A390. These entry-level DLRS are essentially slightly upgraded versions of two existing Sony cameras, the A230 and A380. ... Sony gets official with Sony A290 and A390 digital SLR camerasZDNet (blog) Sony Alpha DSLR-A390 and DSLR-A290, two new entry level camerasNews Provider More Style and Value by Sony for First-Time DSLR UsersMarketWatch (press release) Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) -T3 -Digital Arts Online all 24 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:17 am

British Computer Society Is Officially At Civil War

An anonymous reader writes "A vote of no confidence against the current board of directors has erupted in what is possibly the first nerd war, raging throughout the British Computer Society. More financial- and spreadsheet-related fixations and less computer science have made a few members cross; plus they don't like the new name 'The Chartered Institute of IT.' Here are more specific details on the extraordinary emergency general meeting on July 1, where members will vote to decide the fate of the board of directors."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:16 am

Sony releases two new DSLR cameras (Macworld.com)

Macworld.com - Sony has announced two new additions to its Alpha line of digital SLR cameras: the A290 and the A390. These entry-level DLRS are essentially slightly upgraded versions of two existing Sony cameras, the A230 and A380.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:10 am

Did Facebook Doom Chris Kelly’s Run For CA Attorney General?

Did Facebook doom Chris Kelly’s run for Attorney General of California?

According to early results, Kamala Harris won the Democratic primaries on Tuesday night, leaving the former Chief Privacy Officer in second place. At first glance, the idea of blaming Mark Zuckerberg for Kelly’s downfall seems absurd. Kelly, after all was the underdog, a less known candidate that had consistently trailed Harris (the San Francisco DA) in the polls from a comfortable distance.

However, while the Facebook effect is an improbable theory, it’s still very plausible. Let’s look at the facts.

A May 10 SurveyUSA poll showed Harris in the lead with 22%, Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo with 16%, and Kelly with 11%. Kelly narrowed that gap in recent weeks to six percentage points, thanks to an aggressive ad campaign— the last SurveyUSA poll, conducted this week, showed Kelly with 20%, Harris with 26% and 15% still undecided. This recent advance in the polls, and his leapfrog over Delgadillo, shows that Kelly was able to largely overcome the latest Facebook backlash (which began in earnest in early May). While those numbers suggests that Kelly’s tie to Facebook’s privacy policy didn’t cripple his bid for Attorney General, there is a strong possibility that without the controversy he could have gained more ground in the final days.

Full disclosure: we heartily endorsed Kelly back in August 2009 and we were the first news outlet to report his candidacy. Further Clarification: We have also never sued Chris Kelly for assault and battery and infliction of emotional distress, despite reports.

Kelly was spearheading a well-funded campaign, investing roughly $12 million of his personal fortune. The battle between Harris and Kelly had intensified in the last few months, with each going for the jugular and launching highly charged, negative attacks. Kelly criticized Harris’ conviction rate as district attorney and her role in the police crime lab controversy, Harris questioned Kelly’s campaign financing (which involved Facebook stock) and his role as Facebook’s privacy honcho. As Harris wrote in a campaign statement: “Was Kelly simply a fox guarding the hen house at Facebook?…If Kelly couldn’t stand up to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on behalf of Facebook users, how on earth can Californians trust Kelly to go to bat on their behalf as attorney general?”

If that message wasn’t crystal clear try this brief video ad paid for by Kamala Harris’s campaign, the announcer says: “His only experience is designing a Facebook privacy policy condemned across the country. Chris Kelly released your privacy information.” Note to self, do not pick a fight with Kamala.

Harris’ warpath was clear: she would use the popular site as a vehicle to question Kelly’s ethics– both literally and metaphorically. Serendipitously for her campaign, the Facebook media frenzy broke out just as her battle was approaching its crescendo. Ultimately, the Facebook backlash fizzled and the Fair Political Practices Commission gave the green light on Kelly’s financing, but Kelly did not escape unscathed. There was a spate of reports in publications like Time, SFGate, Wall Street Journal, asking if Facebook would “torpedo” Kelly’s hopes. That’s not the kind of press you want to court in the final hours of your campaign trail. The attacks also put Kelly on the defense, his spokesperson reminded reporters that he had effectively left the company last August (excluding him from the latest round of privacy shenanigans) and Kelly himself issued a statement to distance his campaign from Facebook: “I strongly encourage Facebook to structure all its programs to allow Facebook users to give permission before their information is shared with third parties….When I am Attorney General, Facebook, like every company, will have to comply with its obligations to adhere to the law, provide truthful information to consumers and to keep its promises about their privacy rights.”

Because Facebook formed the foundation of Harris’ offense, it’s fascinating to consider what would have happened if the social site was out of the equation. Sure a majority of the voters probably don’t care about Facebook or its privacy policy, but it could have made the difference for some of the undecided.  And if so, has internet privacy just been catapulted to the rank of major domestic issue? Probably not, but I’m sure it’s a thought that’s crossed Kelly’s mind today.

Source: TechCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:05 am

Google's hot shot search breakthrough ... Caffeine

Google has today launched one of the biggest revamps of its search engine in history, which it says will provide search results that are 70 per cent fresher than the current algorithm. The Sydney Morning...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:09 am

Viral Video: Bieber Yourself–There's an iPhone 4 App for That! [BoomTown]

NBC’s “Late Night” television talk show host Jimmy Fallon is pretty geeky, which is why he tried this sketch about new apps for the new Apple (AAPL) iPhone 4.

Some are funnier than others, but BoomTown liked the “Bieber Yourself” app, after the teen music heartthrob whose unfortunate haircut is well worth mocking.

Which Fallon does.

There are others too, yet another example of Apple getting boatloads of great free marketing via spoofs, such as this one with “Glee” star Jane Lynch.

Here’s the video:

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:07 am

Apple's iPad muscles into corporate Asia after retail buzz

SEOUL (Reuters) - Apple's iPad, initially viewed as a Web entertainment gadget for consumers, is quickly making inroads across businesses in Asia as wedding planners, luxury hotels and...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:06 am

Apple's iPad muscles into corporate Asia after retail buzz (Reuters)

Reuters - Apple's iPad, initially viewed as a Web entertainment gadget for consumers, is quickly making inroads across businesses in Asia as wedding planners, luxury hotels and airlines hook up to the tablet computer.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:06 am

Apple's iAd iPhone advertising platform claims $60m in pre-launch bookings

Deals for advertising on iPhone and iPod Touch apps represent almost half of forecast US mobile ad spending, Apple says, reports The Guardian. The service which will offer advertising inside mobile apps,...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:02 am

Gates backs cell phone banking for Haiti

The massive earthquake in Haiti in January destroyed a third or more of the country's banks and ATMs, but even before the quake fewer than 1 in 10 Haitians had ever used a traditional bank. News.com reports...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:45 am

Send Google Maps Destinations To Your Ford Vehicle

By Chris Scott Barr Having a GPS in my car is great for those times when I’m visiting a new city. It tells me the most efficient way to get to where I need to be. When I want to find something to...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:45 am

Twitter is Finally Filling the Link-Shortening Hole

Twitter is finally moving to fill one of the biggest holes the social network has had since it launched the lack of a built-in link shortener. The new feature is designed to aid in security, but will...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:32 am

Why Are Video Game Movies So Awful?

An article at CNN discusses why big screen interpretations of video games, even successful ones, often fail to succeed at the box office. Quoting: "The problem with successfully adapting video games into hit Hollywood spin-offs may lie in the way in which stories for both mediums are designed and implemented. Game makers chasing the dream of playing George Lucas or Steven Spielberg will always strive to coax human emotion and convincing drama from increasingly photorealistic virtual elements. The Hollywood machine, in its endless chase for big bucks, can't help but exploit the latest hit interactive outing, often failing to realize it's often a specific gameplay mechanic, psychological meme or technical feature that makes the title so compelling. Both sides may very well continue to look down in disdain on the work that the opposite is doing, which can doom any collaborative efforts. But where the two roads truly diverge is in the way stories are fundamentally told. Films offer a single, linear tale that's open to individual interpretation, whereas games are meant to be experienced differently and in a multitude of ways by every player." On a related note, reader OrangeMonkey11 points out that an 8-minute short has showed up online that appears part of a pitch for a potential Mortal Kombat reboot movie. Hit the link below to take a look.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:28 am

NY Times Objects to Pulse News-Reader App, but it's back in App Store

Pulse News Reader, a popular iPad app developed by two students at the Stanford Institute of Design that collects and presents articles from Web sites of news organizations like The New York Times was...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:22 am

Face-Tracking Televisions - The Sony LX900 Turns the TV Off When You aren't Watching

(TrendHunter.com) The Sony LX900 could be the start of something very energy efficient, and potentially creepy. Sony's new line of 3D TVs feature facial recognition and presence detectors. The new...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:20 am

Pirata Boat Race Turns Your iPhone Into An Oar & Provides A Wii-Like Gaming Experience (That's A Good Thing Right?)

By Andrew Liszewski Are you an avid iPhone/iPod Touch gamer who’s found they’ve been packing on the pounds lately? Let’s face it, tapping the screen or slightly twisting the iPhone in...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:16 am

San Francisco Votes On Cell Phone Radiation Labels

San Francisco may become the first city in the nation to require radiation warning labels on cell phones, reports Ozarks First. The Board of Supervisors will meet today to vote on a plan backed by Mayor...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:08 am

Verizon Strives to Close iPhone Gap [Voices]

By Spencer E. Ante, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

When Steve Jobs wrapped up his announcement of the new iPhone 4, another big Apple Inc. (AAPL) event had come and gone with no mention of Verizon Wireless.

That was a disappointment for some smartphone customers. Verizon Wireless (VZ) executives, too, are eager to get their hands on the phone and speak regularly with their counterparts at Apple.

But the country’s largest wireless carrier by subscribers is also working hard on Plan B. By loosening its grip over operations and deepening its relationships with allies such as software giant Google Inc. (GOOG) and handset makers HTC Corp. and Motorola Inc. (MOT), Verizon Wireless is finally making progress in the smartphone race.

Since announcing a deal last October to develop phones with Google, the carrier has introduced two hit Google-based devices—the Motorola Droid and the Droid Incredible by HTC—and its share of the U.S. smartphone market has risen about a percentage point, to 24.1 percent at the end of March, while AT&T’s (T) fell nearly four points to 41.9 percent, according to comScore (SCOR), which measured users over 13 years old.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:00 am

Daily Crunch: Station to Station Edition

Bigelow Aerospace building first private space station
Cthulhu cozy keeps your phone safe from the prying eyes of mortal men
Pro gamers have brains like fighter pilots, lungs like career smokers
Toyko Flash’s Changing Lanes Watch: Changing the way you view your time
Panasonic Japan announces two 3D plasma TVs

Source: CrunchGear | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:00 am

LinkPush: Chrome-to-Phone for the rest of us (those not on Android 2.2)

One of the neat-o features introduced in Android 2.2 (or Froyo) is “Chrome-to-Phone”, which gives the ability to take what you’re viewing in the Google Chrome browser (on your PC/Mac), and push it straight to your Froyo phone.

I’ve not yet seen this in person, though, because I’m stuck on a pre-Froyo build of Android. Which sucks.

But today, that changes: I found someone that — like me — was longing for some Chrome-to-Phone action on their Android 2.1 phone. Unlike me, however, they did something about it.

And so I introduce to you LinkPush: the Chrome-to-Phone alternative for the rest of us.

LinkPush is the combination of a Chrome Extension and an Android application, and both must be installed for it to work.

Once they’re both installed, you simply click on the new “Send link to phone” button in Chrome, open up the LinkPush app on your Android phone and *whammo* you’re redirected to the site.

It tracks whose links are whose by using their Google account, so you’ll have to log in once in Chrome, and once on your phone before it will work.

I’ve just installed it and tried it out, and it does what it says.

However, it’s not without it’s caveats: it only takes the current URL and sends it to your phone, this means that if you’re on a site that has form data or an indirect URL, you will probably be met with a different (error) page. So, if you’re in the middle of reading a big article, don’t expect it to pick up where you left off.

Also, although it will open up the Google Maps application when sent a Google Maps link, it wasn’t able to open up the same map I was viewing in Chrome. Instead, Google Maps threw up an “Unable to load the URL” error.

I wasn’t looking for magic, though, so this is enough to keep me happy.

Now, I just wish it could work the other way around, too…

[via Droid Life]

Source: MobileCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 12:57 am

An iPhone Lover’s (Initial) Thoughts On iPhone 4

This morning, my colleague Jason Kincaid wrote a very good and very level-headed post about the new iPhone (and the new iOS 4 software) from the perspective of an Android user. I’m going to come at it from the other angle.

Recently, I’ve written my takes on both the Nexus One and the EVO 4G from the perspective of an iPhone lover. Obviously, I don’t have an iPhone 4 yet, and so this isn’t a full review, but after the keynote yesterday we did get some hands-on time with the new device. So I figured I’d write down my initial reaction after playing with the new hardware for about 20 minutes or so. Before I go any further, I’ll save you the suspense: it’s awesome.

The Build

The biggest thing that stands out in my mind one day later is that immediately after I put down the iPhone 4 and went back to my iPhone 3GS, the latter felt kind of like a toy in comparison. Now, I’ve always been a fan of the design of the first iPhone over the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS — that is, I liked the aluminum flat back of the first one more than the plastic backs of the second two. The iPhone 4 is a return to form — literally — but it’s even better now, as the aluminum has been replaced by glass (in either black or white).

As Jason noted, the device feels rock solid in your hand. It is without a doubt the most impressive piece of mobile hardware I’ve ever held. There’s nothing on the device that feels janky. Aside from the backside upgrade, all the external buttons on the device are now improved as well. The iPhone 4 is pretty much identical in weight to the iPhone 3GS, but it’s significantly thinner. This may be a bit hard to notice in your hand as the iPhone 3G/3Gs has the curved back (so you mostly handle the thinner edges), but I have no doubt it will be noticeable in your pocket.

The Screen

When the iPhone 3GS first launched, I wasn’t sure that the boost in speed would be enough to make an upgrade worth it. I was wrong. Once I had an iPhone 3GS and went back to using an iPhone 3G, the latter almost seemed unusable to me. Thanks to the screen on the iPhone 4, this seems likely to be the case as well.

As Steve Jobs joked in the keynote, “once you go Retina Display, you can’t go back.” After just 20 minutes of using it, I’m hooked. As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber noted yesterday, it’s not just that the iPhone 4 has four times the pixels of the earlier iPhones, it’s that much of the distance between the glass you touch and the pixels have been removed as well. It’s subtle things like this — things that most people will never even realize they’re noticing (but they are) — that make Apple, Apple.

With the iPhone 3GS (or any of the other iPhones), if you bring the device close enough to your face, you can see the pixels. With the iPhone 4, you can’t. It’s really not like looking at a computer screen at all. It’s like looking at a picture — or when something on the screen is moving, film.

The Speed

In terms of speed, it’s hard to know what is the new iOS 4 and what is the new hardware, but the device does seem to run a little bit smoother. It’s not noticeably faster in the way that the iPhone 3GS was noticeably faster than the iPhone 3G, but I would attribute this to the fact that there are already rarely any lags in the iPhone 3GS with iPhone OS 3. I suspect some new games that come out may push the new A4 chip though.

The Camera

As has already been noted, FaceTime is brilliant in that it requires absolutely no set-up to work. Yes, it sucks that it’s WiFi-only, but that will change with time. It also would have been brilliant for Apple to get this working with iChat on Macs (as others have also noted), but since it’s supposedly going to be published as an open protocol, that will probably come too.

I can see the new front-facing camera doing wonders for startups like DailyBooth — and yes, maybe even ChatRoutlette.

The key feature of the camera though has to be the ability to shoot HD (720p) video. There’s some debate out there as to whether this will or won’t kill the Flip cam. My reaction is that while the iPhone 4 alone may not, I can’t see how all of these new smartphones gaining this feature (the EVO 4G can do it as well) won’t.

The Android Question

I know that it’s shocking to some of you that I would love this device. Most interesting may be my thoughts on what this means or doesn’t mean for Google’s Android platform.

As you’ve undoubtedly read a lot in recent weeks, Google is making fast gains in terms of the Android software. I was beyond impressed at Google I/O with everything that was shown off. With Android 2.2 (which I have running on the Nexus One), most system speed issues seem to have been resolved. That said, in my view, there is still no Android device that is better than the iPhone 3GS. And so obviously, the iPhone 4 just widens the gap.

The fact of the matter is that while the software may be getting there from a practical perspective, it still lacks the polish of the iPhone OS (now iOS). A number of people (on both the iPhone and Android sides) I’ve spoken with recently agree, but point to Google’s recent hiring of Palm’s design guru Matias Duarte as a sign that this may change. I hope so.

Overall app quality on Android also still lags behind the iPhone. And the fact that you have to use third-party task killing applications to get devices like the EVO 4G to run the way it should, is completely unacceptable from a users’ perspective.

With the iPhone 4, Apple has refined the hell out of their winning combination of hardware plus software. It’s hard to imagine it getting much better in this form factor — and that’s why I think we may see some radically different things next year for iPhone 5 (well, aside from a Verizon version).

The Mac vs. PC debate has often found people using a car analogy to explain things. I keep coming back to that when thinking about iPhone vs. Android. For a long time, iPhone felt like a Lexus while Android was more like a Kia. With recent upgrades, Android has transformed into more of a Honda. But with iPhone 4, the iPhone is now an Aston Martin (it was James Bond, remember).

But the crazy thing is that the iPhone is an Aston Martin with a Honda-price. Meanwhile, Android remains a Honda at a Honda-price — it’s a good deal, but it’s not an iPhone-deal.

In fact, it’s such a good deal that I continue to say that the only thing really holding back the iPhone (in the U.S.) is its carrier, AT&T. Even if you have no problems with AT&T, you have to acknowledge that they’re becoming the big barrier to the iPhone’s potential growth. There are simply always going to be million of users not on AT&T. In fact, there will always been more users not on AT&T than are on it. So Apple needs to move beyond it to keep expanding.

And if they’re the Aston Martin being sold at Honda-prices, when they’re sold at other dealerships (other carriers), they’ll dominate, right? Well it’s not that simple.

The Honda-like price is only thanks to the sweet deal Apple gets from AT&T. Without the deal, Apple would undoubtedly sell the iPhone for more money (to keep up their margins), and it would be a less attractive purchase for people. It’s the same reason why everyone doesn’t buy an Aston Martin (or a Lexus, to be more practical). Would some people still opt for the Honda if it was more customizable? Sure, some would. But most would opt for the nicer machine, all things being equal.

But all things aren’t equal because the iPhone is tied only to AT&T. And all things are unlikely to ever be equal because prices might have to go up if the sweet AT&T exclusive subsidy goes away. But seeing the success Apple has had being at the luxury end of the PC market, I’m not sure how much they’ll ultimately care. But the fact that they seem to now (as evidenced by pointing out their market share vs. Android in keynotes) is interesting.

As Jason noted in his piece (and I have in the past), the fact of the matter remains that a strong rivalry between iPhone and Android is a good thing for us all. Android continues to improve at a healthy pace and they have some features (like Google Voice integration) that it seems unlikely now that Apple will ever get. Meanwhile, Apple continues to improve their hardware/software combination at a rate that it’s not clear that Google (and their OEM partners) will be able to match.

It’s two different approaches. And that makes sense since the two have different motives. At the end of the day, Android exists so that Google can get more people searching — and keep them searching as mobile devices overtake computers. The iPhone exists to be one of the mobile devices that overtakes computers so that Apple can keep selling high-margin machines.

In my view, for most consumers, the iPhone remains the winning argument in the space right now. And the iPhone 4 just extends that.

Source: TechCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 12:40 am

Wealthy businesswomen win California Republican races (Reuters)

Reuters - Two powerful Silicon Valley businesswomen won Republican nominations for California governor and the U.S. Senate on Tuesday after capitalizing on their business acumen -- and their personal fortunes.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 12:24 am

Spanish Judges Liken File Sharing To Lending Books

Dan Fuhry writes "A three-judge panel in the Provincial Court of Madrid has closed a case that has been running since 2005, ruling that the accused are not guilty of any copyright infringement on the grounds that their BitTorrent tracker did not distribute any copyrighted material, and they did not generate any profit from their site: '[t]he judges noted that all this takes places between many users all at once without any of them receiving any financial reward.' This implies that the judges are sympathetic to file sharers. The ruling essentially says that file sharing is the digital equivalent of lending or sharing books or other media. Maybe it's time for all them rowdy pirates to move to Spain."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 12:14 am

Fire system glitch halts South Korea rocket launch

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea scrapped plans to launch a scientific satellite into orbit on Wednesday due to a glitch in the fire-extinguishing system on the launchpad in the latest setback
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 9 Jun 2010 | 12:08 am

RSS Feed Pillow

Justin of Chicago's Craftsquatch handmakes these bold RSS Feed Icon Pillows. They're $20 at the Boing Boing Bazaar in the Makers Market. As Justin says, "It will certainly aggregate all your thoughts and dreams into order, giving you real simple sleep." RSS Feed Icon Pillow


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2010 | 11:25 pm

Last shuttle mission will likely be in 2011 - Florida Today

Telegraph.co.uk

Last shuttle mission will likely be in 2011 Florida Today CAPE CANAVERAL — The last scheduled shuttle flight is likely to slip into early next year, Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana said Tuesday. After that and possibly one more mission next summer, ... Put your face in spacemsnbc.com NASA offers to put your face on the space shuttle... sort ofDVICE For Mission to Mars, a New Road MapNew York Times The Tech Herald -Kansas City Star -TG Daily all 306 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Jun 2010 | 11:13 pm

Wikileaks/Manning: "Are America's foreign policy secrets about to go online?"

Following up on an earlier post about the uncloaking and arrest of Army Specialist Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland, who is believed to have leaked the "Collateral Murder" video to Wikileaks, Philip Shenon reports in the Daily Beast about anxiety over more sensitive material Manning may have downloaded and stored. At issue are some 260,000 diplomatic cables from government computer networks that, by some reports, he has admitted to have accessed and was planning to make public. Snip:

"If he really had access to these cables, we've got a terrible situation on our hands," said an American diplomat. "We're still trying to figure out what he had access to. A lot of my colleagues overseas are sweating this out, given what those cables may contain."

He said Manning apparently had special access to cables prepared by diplomats and State Department officials throughout the Middle East regarding the workings of Arab governments and their leaders. The cables, which date back over several years, went out over interagency computer networks available to the Army and contained information related to American diplomatic and intelligence efforts in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, the diplomat said.

He added that the State Department and law-enforcement agencies are trying to determine whether, and how, to approach Wikileaks to urge the site not to publish the cables, given the damage they could do to diplomatic efforts involving the United States and its allies.

The State Department's Worst Nightmare (Daily Beast)

Wired News reporters Kim Zetter and Kevin Poulsen (who first broke the story that Manning had been outed by hacker Adrian Lamo and was now jailed in Kuwait) have posted an update story with more details on the State Department's concerns.

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2010 | 11:01 pm

New podcast story: "The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening"

After a long hiatus, I'm back to my podcast. I've just posted part one of "The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening", originally published on Shareable.net.

MP3 Link

Podcast feed

(Image: Tilt and shift - Leicester Square at night, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from rthakrar's photostream)


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2010 | 10:57 pm

Sprint says it overstated EVO launch day sales - Reuters

Computerworld

Sprint says it overstated EVO launch day sales Reuters NEW YORK/BANGALORE (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp said on Tuesday it had inadvertently overstated the launch day sales of the much anticipated EVO 4G phone from HTC Corp, which is touted as a serious competitor to Apple's iPhone 4. ... Apple's iPhone 4: Four Worthy AlternativesNetworkWorld.com Sprint: First-Day Sales Of Evo Smartphone Were OverstatedWall Street Journal Apple iPhone 4 vs. HTC EVO 4G: Clash Of The Touch-Screen Titans Round 3ChannelWeb Fortune -TG Daily -TechCrunch (blog) all 1,277 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Jun 2010 | 10:48 pm

Sprint says it overstated EVO launch day sales

NEW YORK/BANGALORE (Reuters) - Sprint Nextel Corp said on Tuesday it had inadvertently overstated the launch day sales of the much anticipated EVO 4G phone from HTC Corp, which is touted as
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 8 Jun 2010 | 10:44 pm

Abandoned Borneo baby pygmy elephant rescued in Malaysia

Malaysian wildlife authorities have saved a second endangered pygmy elephant calf on Borneo island, a state minister said Wednesday as he called for an urgent effort to safeguard its...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 8 Jun 2010 | 10:34 pm

Newlyweds discover their paths crossed in Walt Disney World when they were toddlers

A pair of newlyweds was looking through their childhood photos when husband spotted himself as a toddler, being pushed in a stroller by his dad, in the background of one of wife's photos from a Walt Disney World trip when they were both tiny, decades before they met and fell in love. At the time, he lived in Canada and she lived in Florida. Kismet!

Disney World Destiny for Married Couple


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2010 | 10:07 pm

June 9, 1902: Put a Nickel In, Take Your Food Out

A coin-operated cafeteria opens in Philadelphia. The idea will catch on.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 10:00 pm

Sprint HTC EVO 4G sold out according to Sprint online store

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

If you navigate over to the Sprint online store and search for the HTC EVO 4G, you will be granted with a dismaying message: the HTC EVO 4G is sold out, but it actually does say “Sorry, this device is so hot we can’t keep it on our virtual shelves.”  I guess it was only a matter of time the 4G smartphone would be temporarily out of stock, especially considering just yesterday Sprint announced the record sales for the HTC EVO 4G.  In fact, most recent estimates indicate the HTC EVO 4G sold over 200,000 units in its debut weekend.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes for Sprint to replenish its online stock.  For the sake of Sprint, I hope HTC manages to increase production because the phone is definitely a coveted smartphone. 

Check it out [Sprint]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Jun 2010 | 9:46 pm

Second Oil Spill in Gulf Confirmed (So What?)

A second oil spill has been found in the Gulf. It raises questions about what else we'd find, if we looked hard enough.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 9:42 pm

Cory Doctorow On For the Win, Gold Farming, and DRM

adaviel passes along a New Scientist interview with Cory Doctorow, who has been touring for his new book For the Win. The SF author and technology activist talks about DRM, gold farming, and much else besides.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jun 2010 | 9:12 pm

Microsoft Announces Pricing of Private Offering of Convertible Senior Notes

This announcement does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy securities. The offer and the sale of the convertible notes and the shares of common stock underlying the convertible notes have not been registered under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the securities laws of any other jurisdiction and the convertible notes and underlying shares of common stock may not be offered or sold absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Jun 2010 | 9:08 pm

Microsoft Announces Pricing of Private Offering of Convertible Senior Notes

Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 8 Jun 2010 | 9:08 pm

10 Things the Chinese Government Ignores About Web Censorship - eWeek

Globe and Mail

10 Things the Chinese Government Ignores About Web Censorship eWeek News Analysis: Web censorship is giving the Chinese government a black eye. Time and again, it has said that its practices are due to its desire to work in the best interest of the country. But it needs to learn a thing or two about Web censorship ... China says it will keep blocking online contentThe Associated Press China wants a little RESPECT when it comes to internet policiesDailyTech China Praises the Internet as It Strangles ItTechNewsWorld Reuters -The Money Times -PC World all 547 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Jun 2010 | 9:01 pm

Why Japan Matters: iPad Mania, Cloud Computing, And Social Intelligence

Editor’s note: Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, really loves Japan. And if you are a startup founder or tech executive, he thinks you should too. He explains why in this guest post, culled from observations from his most recent visit.

Thousands of people lined up last week to buy iPads. And, if you didn’t notice them, it’s because they were in Tokyo.

I’ve been living in Japan for the past three weeks and couldn’t miss the madness around the introduction of the iPad here. I couldn’t believe the demand for this new “magical” computer. After all, this is the country that developed and built some of the world’s most popular PCs—and now the iPad, which was designed somewhere else, is revered. It’s bowed to. (Reportedly, about half of Japanese business and technology magazines are featuring the iPad on their covers.) I expect that out of the 10 million iPads sold this year, at least 500,000 to one million will be sold in Japan.

Something else amazing in Apple-mania happened last week. Apple’s market cap passed Microsoft. I suggested in a post last April, “The end of Microsoft. A door opens to a new cloud”, that this seminal event was about to happen. Steve Jobs described it as being “Surreal”. I agree. It is surreal—both unbelievable and fantastic. This is a milestone that signifies a dramatic change of computing: Windows is on the decline, and new technologies such as iPads and iPhones, Android and Google Search, and Cloud Computing are on the way up.

I have to admit, I love Japan. I love the people, the culture, the language, the architecture, the food—everything. I love walking through the temples and gardens in Kyoto. And, I love the philosophy of “Zen.” I love working in Tokyo, which runs at a frenetic charge that’s even higher than New York City.

The reason I’ve been spending so much time in Japan is because it has become salesforce.com’s second largest market. We’ve found that the Japanese love Cloud Computing because it gives them great software that is eco-friendly, equal for all businesses, and upgrade-free. When I was at Oracle, Japanese customers were always waiting for our special “J” products (the port of our English versions), or the bug fix of a “J” port. It was often a long and painful wait. Cloud Computing solves all of these problems, and Japanese customers receive new software on day one, as well as bug fixes as they happen. Instant gratification.

One of the things that captivated my attention in Japan was how utterly swept the country is with social networking—there is a Japanese Facebook Imperative underway. Japan is already one of Twitter’s largest markets, and local social vendors like Mixi are pervasive. Japanese customers have easily and rapidly adopted social networking as it is highly compatible with their community-based culture. Japan, more than any other country, is ready to accelerate social networking with mobile. The wide penetration of 3G will be an engine for this movement. In fact, Japan has the highest percentage market penetration of 3G of any country, according to InfoCom. The combination of dominant social market share and broadband wireless is a powerful catalyst for Japan’s IT industry.

In my own personal experience here, I’ve seen this willingness to embrace social communications firsthand. Over the past few weeks of demonstrating Salesforce Chatter, salesforce.com’s new enterprise social networking service, I was amazed to find that Japanese customers made unusually quick decisions to pursue it. Customers in other parts of the world (including the U.S.) have required a great deal of testing and evaluation. But in Japan there was an innate understanding of our app to be a Twitter or Mixi for the enterprise, which translated seamlessly—and drove adoption. This experience inspired me to think about what I call “Social Intelligence,” an idea I believe will launch us past business intelligence as the next major theme in enterprise computing.

In Tokyo I enjoyed dinner with one of my friends, John Hinshaw, the global CIO of Boeing. I already knew Boeing is preparing to release the Dreamliner, the most advanced airplane in the world. But, I didn’t know that 35% of the Dreamliner is manufactured in Japan. In fact, the entire all-composite wing—the first of its size and sure to set the standard for how commercial airplanes will be made—is made by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Nagoya. Each 98-foot long wing is then airlifted to Washington for assembly in Boeing’s special cargo plane, “the Dreamlifter”. If you aren’t sold on Japan’s abilities for the complex yet, consider that Japan also leads the world in energy and environmental patents and it is also the global leader in energy research and development expenditure and efficiency. I can certainly understand why Boeing is also focused on Japan.

When you get an iPad, the new iPhone 4, or iPod you can’t miss seeing “designed by Apple in California”—the tagline that has generated heat from critics who get upset because the device is assembled in China. But what most people don’t recognize is that the parts are made all over the world, with some of the most important components being produced in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Take the iPod Nano. The flash memory is made by Toshiba, the Li-Ion battery is made by Sanyo and Sony, and the color LCD is made by Sharp, Toshiba, and Matsushita—making the total of the Japanese share in terms of cost 81%. The reality is the iPod is made possible by some of the most important technology in the world—and a lot of it is from Japan. Even 10% of the iPad comes from Japan (the rest is made by Taiwanese and Korean manufacturers). Japan is one of the countries doing some of the most exciting research and development in the most complex components, which is what drives the most compelling products.

While in Japan I learned that Japan’s political and technology leaders recognize that embracing new technology and developing fundamental infrastructure are at the core of this country. Anyone who has experienced the bullet train, driven on Japan’s highways, or made a cell phone call in Tokyo, knows Japan fully commits to these two tenets. Cloud Computing is viewed as a critical next step for Japan, and it is the fastest growing part of Japan’s IT industry. Japan is always focused on getting the next big thing right. (And it usually does. I think the energy around the iPad last week demonstrates that they’re ready for Cloud 2—the next transformation in computing being defined by cloud + social + iPad.

One of the greatest surprises during my trip was that then-Prime Minister Hatoyama requested a meeting with me. I spent almost an hour with him demonstrating the power of Cloud Computing in Japan. Then he had a final meeting with the Chinese President. And, then he resigned. Why would he care so much about the Cloud to spend some of his final moments in office with me? I think he realized that he needed to send a clear signal that this new technology is pivotal to the future of Japan.

Right before I left Tokyo for home I met with John Roos, the new United States Ambassador to Japan. John is the former CEO of Wilson Sonsini, and is a Bay Area native. Interestingly, he had never been to Japan before being nominated to his position. He asked me why more entrepreneurs in the U.S. weren’t focused on the amazing markets in Japan. I told him that although the Japanese IT market is the second largest in the world, it’s notoriously difficult for many Americans to navigate. I am grateful to my Japan guru, Larry Ellison, with whom I was fortunate enough to experience many trips to this country while I worked at Oracle for 13 years. If it wasn’t for that direct education, I don’t think salesforce.com would be as successful as it is here.

Japan is accessible through several non-stop flights from San Francisco every day. And while the Japanese market and Japanese customers wait for the arrival of the next great thing, most entrepreneurs, and even VC firms, focus instead on China and India. I have never understood why, as China and India represent a market that is an order of magnitude smaller than Japan when it comes to key technologies, like software. Sure, India and China are fast-growing markets, but the current buyers are in Japan. The way I see it: If you are overlooking Japan you might as well overlook the West Coast of the U.S. The Japanese city of Osaka has a bigger economy than the state of California.

As the second largest IT market outside of the US, the reality is Japan still matters. The world is changing profoundly (just look at my favorite Apple vs. Microsoft market cap chart), but there are some traditional and established entities that retain a significant influence. Entrepreneurs should take note that 85% of all enterprise software is still essentially bought in three core markets: the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. Ignoring Japan means ignoring one of the most important opportunities. And, if you need a hand in this market, come with me on my next trip. I can’t wait to get back.

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Jun 2010 | 8:59 pm

Apple's iPhone 4 Gathers Strong Analyst Reviews, with Reservations - eWeek

Telegraph.co.uk

Apple's iPhone 4 Gathers Strong Analyst Reviews, with Reservations eWeek Apple CEO Steve Jobs debuted the iPhone 4, the company's next-generation smartphone, during the opening day of the 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference. Analysts' reviews have generally been strong, praising features such as the FaceTime video calling ... Wireless Woes Rain 'Fail' on Steve Jobs' KeynoteWired News Jobs has lofty goal for iPhone 4's FaceTime video chat with open standardComputerworld Your iPhone 4 Questions AnsweredFOXNews PC Magazine -Inquirer -TechNewsWorld all 1,537 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Jun 2010 | 8:56 pm

Alienware M11x adds Core i5 and i7, still starts under $1000

Section: Computers, Laptops, Gaming

The Alienware M11x is one of the best combinations of portability and power in a PC out there.  At under $1000 with an 11-inch screen and specs capable of running some of the newest games it was impressive even when it packed a Core 2 Duo.  Today Dell has upgraded the Alienware-branded netbook-sized gaming laptop.

The first big addition to the M11x is the upgrade to an Intel Core i5 CPU in the higher-sec standard build.  The Core i5 can be replaced with a Core i7, adding $150 to the $949 standard Core i5.  The new Intel Core build also include Nvidia Optimus graphics, providing easy switching between an Intel integrated graphics chip or the 1GB Nvidia GeForceGT 335M graphics.  To fit the new chips, Dell had to remove the VGA port on the M11x, though it’s a worthwhile sacrifice since the laptop still has a HDMI port for video output.

The upgrade to the M11x makes it an interesting device for those who need a lot of power in an easily transported size.  The price makes it even more attractive, though it obviously increases when upgraded.  With the specs maxed out to a Core i7, 8GB of RAM, 256GD SSD, Gobi 3G radio, Bluetooth, an external DVD drive and Windows 7 Ultimate, the price comes to $2,393.99.  That’s well above the $949, and gets into territory where it might just make sense to buy a larger laptop to have some extra screen with all the power.

Product [Dell] Via [Gizmodo]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Jun 2010 | 8:39 pm

/C O R R E C T I O N -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd./

In the news release, TSMC Unveils Two New Reference Flows, issued 08-Jun-2010 by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Jun 2010 | 8:31 pm

Leaked shot shows blurry Droid 2?

I’m not sure, in this day and age, how anyone is able to take such incredibly blurry spy shots. I mean, noisy sure, a little blur here and there, sure. But so much so that it looks like vaseline on the lens? How?!

Regardless of the answer to that little mystery, this incomparably blurry shot put up over at Droid-Life seems to show a new Motorola model, A955, which designation was spotted in a filing with the Xtreme. Seems it’s the Droid 2 we’re looking at.

Source: MobileCrunch | 8 Jun 2010 | 8:05 pm

MTV Networks Asia and GigaMedia to Co-Develop World's First SpongeBob SquarePants Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG)

Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 8 Jun 2010 | 8:00 pm

Office takes on Google Docs with Office Live

Section: Web, Web Apps

Somewhat overshadowed by the Apple takeover on the web yesterday, the Windows Live blog announced the launch of the Office Live, Windows’ response to document storage, editing, and collaboration on the internet. Office Live actually has a lot of very cool features that will no doubt give Google Docs a run for its money.

First and foremost, all of its features (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote) are free with a Windows Live account. Second you can upload all of your Office Documents to the cloud where you can edit on any computer at any time. Third you can collaborate in real-time on documents. Fourth, if you visit Office.live.com on your smartphone you can view Word and PowerPoint documents on the go.

While you might already have this on Google Docs, the OneNote features as well as the mobile support really makes this service a competitor in the cloud-based document space.

Read [Windows Live Blog Via WebWorkerDaily]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Jun 2010 | 7:29 pm

Meet the Two Grad Students Who Freaked Out the NYT–The Pulse iPad App Creators Speak! [BoomTown]

The first thing to strike you about the pair of Stanford University graduate students (pictured here) who made the banned and then unbanned news-reading iPad app, Pulse News Reader, is how they look like an advertisement for all that is good about entrepreneurship.

Sweet-natured, slightly naive, energetic and very product focused, they’d be the last techies you’d choose to be the ones who got the New York Times (NYT) in a tizzy enough to force Apple to pull the aggregator from its App Store.

BoomTown met Akshay Kothari, 23, and 22-year-old Ankit Gupta this afternoon at a hotel near the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, where Pulse was called out yesterday by name by Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs for excellence, only hours before the company had to stop offering it to users.

At first, the shy pair said they did not want to call attention to themselves or rail on Apple or the Times. After much convincing by me, they agreed to talk about their unusual situation on the video below, focusing on the product and its origins.

It started out simple enough, creating Pulse for the Launch Pad class at Stanford, which requires students to develop and put out a product. Both students are at Stanford’s Institute of Design and created a company called Alphonso Labs when Pulse was done.

It took them only four weeks to develop and, within weeks after it being approved to sell in the App Store, Pulse became a red-hot paid seller for the fast-growing tablet device–putting Pulse at No. 1 at times on list of paid apps on iTunes.

In fact, the app was so well-regarded that the the Times wrote a rave of it last week.

The high culminated for Kothari and Gupta when Jobs named Pulse first in a list of the most promising apps for the iPad in his keynote speech at the WWDC yesterday.

Unfortunately, that was the last hurrah for them, since business side of the New York Times–after seeing the article about Pulse in the Times–had already fired off a letter to Apple demanding the app be taken down.

“The Pulse News Reader app, makes commercial use of the NYTimes.com and Boston.com RSS feeds, in violation of their Terms of Use,” wrote Times lawyer Richard Samson to Apple on June 3. “Thus, the use of our content is unlicensed. The app also frames the NYTimes.com and Boston.com websites in violation of their respective Terms of Use.”

Sources at the Times said while there are many other similar readers for online news that do exactly the same thing, Pulse’s combined framing and use of its RSS feed for commercial gain–as well as, let’s be frank, its popularity–caused execs to make what looks like a pretty boneheaded move.

(Could they have called the pair first? Of course they could have, but did not.)

So, after the Times lawyer wrote Apple, Apple wrote Kothari and Gupta, telling them of the removal of Pulse from the App Store: “The New York Times Company believes your application named ‘Pulse News Reader’ infringes The New York Times Company’s rights.”

Today, though, the app was suddenly back up with no comment from Apple.

A Times spokesperson has said this might be a mistake and that the media giant did not know what had happened.

Neither did Gupta and Kothari, who said the app on sale now is the same as the old one, although they had submitted a new version without the Times as a default earlier today.

“It’s a mystery,” said Gupta. “Although it is sad that we were off the App Store right when people might have heard about us.”

The next step? Who knows.

UPDATE: Sources close to the situation said that the Pulse iPad app was reposted, because of the new version submitted earlier today that does not automatically include the Times properties and it will soon update older versions sold.

Other sources also noted that the Times has had issues with many other third-party news readers in the past, though not one as visible as Pulse.

And, it will remain to be seen if Pulse’s creators face other irked content owners or not.

In any case, one thing is still certain: Like its creators, the innovative Pulse is one sweet app and it is on sale for $3.99 on iTunes.

For now, that is.

Until the next twisty development, here’s the video interview of Kothari and Gupta:

[Photo by All Things Digital intern Drake Martinet--taken before the recent controversy.]

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Jun 2010 | 7:17 pm

Olympus Digital Camera Ships With a Worm

An anonymous reader writes "Olympus Japan has issued a warning to customers who have bought its Stylus Tough 6010 digital compact camera that it comes with an unexpected extra — a virus on its internal memory card. The Autorun worm cannot infect the camera itself, but if it is plugged into a Windows computer's USB port, it can copy itself onto the PC, then subsequently infect any attached USB device. Olympus says it 'humbly apologizes' for the incident, which is believed to have affected some 1,700 units. The company said it will make every effort to improve its quality control procedures in future. Security company Sophos says that more companies need to wake up to the need for better quality control to ensure that they don't ship virus-infected gadgets. At the same time, consumers should learn to always ensure Autorun is disabled, and scan any device for malware before they use it on their computer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jun 2010 | 7:11 pm

State Department Anxious About Possible Leak of Cables to Wikileaks

U.S. State Department and embassy officials around the world are waiting anxiously as investigators scramble to determine if an Army analyst gave 260,000 classified diplomatic cables to Wikileaks.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 7:05 pm

US Border Patrol union rep: It's okay to shoot Mexican kids who throw stones

After listening to this NPR News piece on a Border Patrol agent shooting a 14-year-old Mexican child near the Juarez/El Paso border, Boing Boing pal Drew Carey noted on Twitter, "I agree the Border Patrol has a tough job, but shooting rock-throwers should be a no-go. Find a non-lethal way to handle it."

Couldn't agree more, and I say that as someone who's aware of what a dangerous and chaotic place that part of the border is. I've spent a lot of time around the border, and on both sides of it, in California/Baja.

According to the NPR News piece, the union rep for Border Patrol agents says it is alright for agents to shoot Mexican children who throw rocks at them.

"There are so many non-lethal weapons available to law enforcement." Drew tweeted, "Has the Border Patrol even considered them?"

The child's body was found on the Ciudad Juarez side of the fence. By all accounts available at the time of this blog post, he never crossed over on to the US side, and was not attempting to do so. He was unarmed, and he was shot in the head. Sergio Adrian Hernández was his name. Related reports at CNN, WSJ, BBC en Español, and El Diario Digital / Juarez (graphic content warning: contains image of Mexican police standing by the dead body).

Thumbnail: that's the slain kid's mom.

(Photo: Jesus Alcazar/AFP/Getty Images)


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2010 | 7:02 pm

Winning The App Store Lotto: What A Week At No.1 In The App Store Looks Like

Ever wonder what a week as the No. 1 free iPhone app in the App Store translates to in downloads and ad revenues? One of the employees at mobile ad management platform Burstly created an app called Air Horn, which simply makes a very loud horn noise. The app, which had been out for over 6 months and had zero marketing dollars spent to promote it, recently hit the No. 1 spot on the Free App list.

Developed in less than three hours by Alex Miyamura, Air Horn was at the top spot for 8 days and just dropped to no. 2 this morning. Over the past week, Air Horn has made $20,000 from advertising (ad banners) and in-app purchases.

Three days before the app hit the top spot, Air Horn had 5,453 downloads within a day and was ranked 804 on the list. On May 31, the app’s first day at the top of the list, the app had grown to 173,002 downloads that day. As of Monday, June 7, the app was still No. 1 with 129,286 daily downloads.

Of course, ad impressions rose rapidly as the downloads rose. Daily ad impressions on Air Horn increased from 160,000 per day to more than 2,000,000 per day at peak. As of June 7, Air Horn had served a total of 4 million 3rd party ad network impressions since reaching No. 1. Over that time, the app served 4 million cross promotion impressions to promote Miyamura’s other app Annoying Sounds. Annoying Sounds subsequently shot all the way to the No. 5 on the list within a week. Before the cross-promotion, Annoying Sounds was not even a top-1000 app. Daily ad impressions on Annoying Sounds jumped from 35,000 per day to more than 1,000,000 per day at peak.

As impressions increased, so did the eCPM. The average initial eCPM on Air Horn was $2.06 and increased to an average of $2.62 over 8 days. As the app’s impressions scaled, certain ad networks started performing better and Burstly helped him optimize by prioritizing the high performing ad networks to serve the majority of the ad impressions. The click rate on the Annoying Sounds banner within Air Horn was 4.6% and the 3rd party ad network click rate averaged 3.4%.

Miyamura and Burstly CEO Evan Rifkin maintain that there is no solid reason as to why Air Horn rose to the top. One theory is that downloads increased because of the season of college and high school graduations. Rifkin does say that winning the App Lotto has shown that ad optimization works and the eCPM increased 27% over 8 days. And there’s virtue in App Cross Promotion, as evidenced by success of Annoying Sounds.

While App Horn is only one subjective example of an app’s rise to the top, it does prove that being No. 1 on the App Store’s list makes a significant difference in terms of engagement. And stats like these are always compelling because they shed light on the somewhat mysterious App Store ecosystem. But as for why a Air Horn noise app made it to the top, we’ll never know.

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:40 pm

WWDC: Apple's iPhone 4 Is A Killer, But Where's The Mac? - ChannelWeb

The Guardian

WWDC: Apple's iPhone 4 Is A Killer, But Where's The Mac? ChannelWeb If there's one lesson to be learned at WWDC 2010, it's that the iPhone operating system is Apple's top banana and Mac OS developers are apparently also-rans in the Age of Apps. Kicking off the Worldwide Developers Conference on ... Apple seeds iOS 4 Gold Build to DevelopersTechtree.com Apple's Lack of HDMI on iPhone 4: It's iOS's FaultPhoneNews.com Apple's iOS 4 due out June 21, free to all usersArs Technica Apple Insider -TG Daily -Blogsdna (blog) all 271 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:27 pm

The leftover pictures from WWDC

I'm a total tech conference noob. Despite my best efforts to fight dying batteries and slow Internet connections I still didn't manage to get some of my better photos up on the post from yesterday.

Here's my Flickr set from after my laptop croaked, chock full of Steve and close ups of the new iPhone.


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:20 pm

Caffeine: Google Finally Brews Its New Pot Of Web Results — 50% Fresher

In August of last year, we wrote about Caffeine, the codename for Google’s latest iteration of its search product. The idea behind it was simple yet encompassing: to “push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.” Back in December, it looked just about ready, but never came. Today, it’s finally ready to roll.

In a post on the Google Blog, the company is saying that the new web indexing system is complete. Significantly, it provides “50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered.” Basically, you’ll now be able to find more current links faster than ever before.

Google says that while the old index consisted of several layers (some of which were updated faster than others), the new Caffeine index will “analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally.”

Some big stats they throw out about Caffeine:

• every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel -if this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second
• Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day
• You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:19 pm

Sony VAIO J all-in-one touchscreen PC announced

Section: Computers, Desktops

Sony has just announced one of the more attractive options in the Touchscreen All-In-One category, the Vaio J.

The Vaio J sports a 1920x1080 21.5” touchscreen, 2.66 GHz Core i7 CPU, nVidia discrete graphics, and 8GB of RAM. It boots into Windows 7 from a 500GB hard drive with its very own touch-friendly Media Gallery that Sony has programmed.

While the specifications might not turn any heads in the enthusiast department, the starting price of $900 will satisfy just about any consumers needs. You can go ahead pre-order the Vaio J today and it will be hitting stores next month

Via [Engadget]

Press Release:

SONY UNVEILS NEW ENTRY-LEVEL PRICED TOUCH-SCREEN PC VAIO J
All-In-One Puts Music, Photos and Blu-ray Disc Movies One-Touch Away

SAN DIEGO, June 8, 2010 – Sony today unveiled its new, affordable touch-enabled, multi-media machine- the VAIO® J Touch All-In-One PC.

With the VAIO J Series’ multi-touch screen, easy access to your PC, HD movies- your entire entertainment hub- is readily at your fingertips.

Equipped with a 21.5-inch (diagonal) 1920x1080 widescreen panel, the unit displays high-definition content in Full HD. Select models feature a Blu-ray Disc™ optical drive so you can enjoy movies in stunning 1080p high definition.

“The J Series changes the way consumers interact with their PC enabling them to tap, drag, zoom, rotate and engage with their content and entertainment like never before,” said Mike Lucas, senior vice president of the VAIO business at Sony. “And with its attractive price point, this cutting-edge technology will reach a whole new audience.”

The J Series comes with three unique hardware buttons-VAIO, ASSIST and DISPLAY OFF to get you to where you want to go with a touch of a button.

Launch directly into Sony’s own Media Gallery software by pushing the designated VAIO button and simplify your music library. With Media Gallery you can automatically create 21 unique channels of music based on beat, tone, rhythm and other elements. It also enables you to rediscover forgotten favorites by recommending content you already own based on your unique listening and viewing habits.

Facilitate simple do-it-yourself PC maintenance procedures by pressing the ASSIST button and launching the included VAIO Care™ software program. Finally a DISPLAY OFF button is included so you can turn off your screen for privacy or to perform nighttime applications without sending your PC into hibernation.

By utilizing built-in wireless 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi technology and your wireless router (required, sold separately), you can position the model virtually anywhere in your home and access the Internet, email or home network.

A built-in webcam with face-tracking technology and microphone let you video chat with colleagues. Included Webcam Message Board software makes it easy to create video messages or leave handwritten notes on the screen. A third-party internet service provider is required.
The unit packs a powerful 2010 Intel® Core™ processor (select models), loads of RAM, and an optional dedicated NVIDIA® GeForce ® series graphics for graphic-intense gaming and movies. It comes with Windows® 7 Home Premium or Professional 64-bit operating system.

Featuring a stylish, compact design the PC comes with an adjustable stand to help you adjust it to meet your desired viewing or touch angle or simply to decrease the slant for space-saving. A wireless keyboard and mouse that can easily be stored under the unit’s display are included.
The VAIO® J Touch All-in-one PC will start at about $900. It is available for pre-orders today online at www.sonystyle.com/pr/jseries. It will also be sold at Sony Style® stores and select retailers around the country starting next month.

###
Editor’s Note: For complete specifications and digital images, members of the news media are invited to visit Sony Electronics’ news and information web site at www.sony.com/news. For all things VAIO visit www.sony.com/jseries. For information on BackstageSM, Sony’s in-store VAIO PC services and repairs division, log onto www.sonystyle.com/backstage.

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:11 pm

Did Apple Tell Times to Shove Its App-Takedown Letter?

Apple re-instates a news-reading app it had taken down hours earlier after the New York Times objected. While not providing an explanation, it looks like Apple thinks the Times is just plain wrong.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:11 pm

Making Hotmail Hot Again Hot Again [The Mossberg Solution]

Like it or not, your personal email address says something about you. Gmail tends to be considered the cool email to have today. Apple’s (AAPL) .Mac addresses (now .Me) identify users who own Macs and don’t mind paying $100 a year for email and related services. AOL (AOL) emails are tied to adults who haven’t changed their address since the dial-up days. And Hotmail is seen as old school.

[ See post to watch video ]

Since its debut in 1996, Hotmail has soared to 400 million users world-wide. But it also lost users along the way—particularly in 2008—due in part to a general perception that Hotmail wasn’t as modern as other email services.

Starting this week, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) will try to change the way Hotmail is perceived by rolling out a revamped version. The company, which bought the program in 1998, has scrapped its attempts to get people to use its site for social networking, acknowledging that companies like Facebook and Twitter are already doing the job. And it has cleaned up its once confusing nomenclature: Hotmail is the sole name for Microsoft’s Web email program.

To spread the word, Microsoft recently launched a massive marketing campaign, involving online, radio and outdoor ads running through the end of the year, that will cost the company tens of millions of dollars, according to Microsoft general manager, Brian Hall. Mr. Hall says that “The New Busy” campaign is intended to demonstrate how Hotmail’s organizational features help busy people with full lives. Part of the campaign will focus on reintroducing current Hotmail users to new features.

But should you really consider reviving your old Hotmail account or opening a new one? I’ve been using this new version of Hotmail for the past few weeks and I’ve found it handled large files with ease, performed browser-like tasks within the inbox and integrated third-party social networks and email accounts. Though the Hotmail name still conjures up frustrating memories of too much spam and the belief that storage was restricted, Microsoft has revamped its old email service into one that’s smart, robust and reliable. It deserves a second look.

The new Hotmail displays more on one screen, including photos.

Hotmail is still big on sorting emails according to your existing “Contacts” versus everyone else. This works well if you’ve taken the time to add all of your friends to the Contacts list, a procedure that takes a couple seconds per person and is done as you send emails to people. This prompting can be a bit of a pain, but if you haven’t done it, you might miss emails from people you care about. A Microsoft representative said that by the end of this summer, users will be able to opt out of this sorting.

At first glance, the new Hotmail doesn’t look dramatically different. But a closer look reveals intelligent organizational tools. Shortcut tabs at the top of the inbox display only messages from social networks (think of all those email notifications from Facebook and Twitter), pre-made email groups or contacts. Many other email programs only do this if users manually set up folders.

Another organizational tool is called Quick Views. It automatically sorts four types of emails into folders: Flagged, Photos, Office Docs and Shipping Updates. These categories come preset and cannot be customized.

Quick Views saved me from digging through my inbox for specific emails and from dragging certain emails into folders for saving. When I ordered gifts online for a friend’s wedding, the shipping notification emails from the delivery service arrived in my inbox and were also viewable in the Shipping Updates folder. Emails with attached Office documents were neatly sorted into the Office Docs folder.

Behind the scenes of the revamped Hotmail, Microsoft is powering all inboxes with Windows Live SkyDrive—an ever-growing, server-based storage repository that guarantees you’ll never be asked to clean out your inbox. (As with many Web-based email programs, Hotmail stores your emails on servers rather than taking up space on your hard drive.)

SkyDrive also gives Hotmail users more freedom when sharing photos: Images can be quickly uploaded to SkyDrive and shared with friends via a Web link. One message can include up to 200 photos of 50 megabytes each, or 10 gigabytes total. Meanwhile, Gmail limits attachments to about 25 megabytes per message.

When Word, PowerPoint or Excel documents are attached to any message received, they are opened right in the Web browser, without having to open another program. This works thanks to a program called Office Web Apps, which functions regardless of whether or not Office 2010 is installed on the computer. Just as photos are shared from Hotmail using a SkyDrive link, so, too, are Office documents.

Hotmail’s inbox now has a Sweep feature, which lets you move or delete all emails from a particular sender. (A similar option in Microsoft Office 2010 wipes out all emails sent prior to the last message in a thread.) Another option for tidying up your inbox is Conversation View, which sorts all emails sent in the same conversation into one group. Users can opt in or out of this, unlike Gmail, which offers only threaded emails.

Tough spam filters caught every Viagra-related email sent to my Hotmail address. And if you identify a piece of mail in the Junk folder that isn’t actually spam, Hotmail remembers this and sorts differently in the future.

Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, now plays a role in Hotmail. It’s built into the search box as an option for scouring Web content directly from the inbox. It can be accessed while composing a message: A small “From Bing” drop-down menu in the email you’re writing lets you search for content to add to emails, like maps, videos, images and movie show times. This content appears in a right-side panel and can be embedded in email messages with one click.

To keep people from straying away to different Web pages while using Hotmail, Web functions can be performed from right within its inbox. These functions include watching videos from YouTube or Hulu, or viewing photos from Flickr or SmugMug. I clicked on YouTube links in emails and watched videos in a handsome overlay screen. And if an email includes codes for tracking packages using the U.S. Postal Service, the package’s real-time shipping status appears within the email. A Microsoft representative confirmed that FedEx and UPS are in the works.

I added my Gmail account to my Hotmail account, so I could check several personal email messages on the same Web page. In a similar manner, Hotmail can pull multiple contacts from several networks—like phone numbers and emails from LinkedIn or birthdays from Facebook—into a single Contact list.

Hotmail may have burned you in the past, but this beefed-up new version saves you time and is a pleasure to use.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg. Email Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:07 pm

REDFLEX Traffic Systems, Inc. Wins Unanimous Jury Verdict Vs ATS

Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:03 pm

Researchers Capture First Images Of Sub-Nano Pore Structures

Moore's law marches on: In the quest for faster and cheaper computers, scientists have imaged pore structures in insulation material at sub-nanometer scale for the first time.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:01 pm

More rumors have Hulu going to new devices, premium pay model soon

These aren’t new rumors, exactly: we heard Hulu bought a ticket to Xbox-town a week ago, and of course the pay model has been a long time coming. In fact, it was supposed to launch a couple weeks ago. We heard there was a delay, and now “sources” are saying the move to pay (and to other devices, including the iPad) will happen “in the next month or two.” What! That’s as specific as they could get? Some source! Reuters would do better to read CrunchGear.

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:00 pm

Our new search index: Caffeine

(Cross-posted on the Webmaster Central Blog)

Today, we're announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Some background for those of you who don't build search engines for a living like us: when you search Google, you're not searching the live web. Instead you're searching Google's index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need. (Here's a good explanation of how it all works.)

So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It's growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people's expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

To keep up with the evolution of the web and to meet rising user expectations, we've built Caffeine. The image below illustrates how our old indexing system worked compared to Caffeine:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

We've built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it's a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

Posted by Carrie Grimes, Software Engineer

Source: The Official Google Blog | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:00 pm

Spreadtrum and MET Establish a Strategic Partnership to Introduce 'I Love MiC' Music Phone Solutions

Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:00 pm

Boulder Dash: Radio-Controlled Rock Crawlers Take Toys to New Heights

The makers of these well-engineered RC crawlers have thought of everything, offering up waterproof electronics, contortionist-like suspension and bright LED headlights.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:00 pm

Games: StarCraft Gets a Hi-Res Upgrade

Fans are sure to go crazy when the sequel StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is released later this year, but the pros will need time to feel the same.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:00 pm

Government Funding For Synthetic Biology On The Rise

New report compares US and European fundingA new analysis by the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center found that the U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:59 pm

Apple's "evil/genius" plan to punk the Web and gild the iPad - Ars Technica

Telegraph.co.uk

Apple's "evil/genius" plan to punk the Web and gild the iPad Ars Technica There were two awkward moments yesterday at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference. A few sites have already made much of Steve Jobs' wireless networking difficulties during his demonstration. ... Safari 5's 'Reader' Nudges Web Publishers to App StoreWired News Freeware Files: Spice up Chrome and Firefox with... Safari 5 Features?Maximum PC First look: Safari 5's extensionsComputerworld Register -News Provider -eWeek all 313 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:58 pm

Twitter Hints At Content Recommendation Service With New Link Shortener

Today, Twitter has expanded the testing of its own URL shortner — which is now using the t.co domain. The expansion (which will eventually be available to all Twitter users) is interesting in terms of what it means for the URL shortening ecosystem. But it also should be interesting from a broader perspective to the entire ecosystem because it opens up some new possibilities, such as content recommendation.

Twitter developer Raffi Krikorian notes as much in the Twitter Development Talk Google Group today. Specifically, he writes, “we want to be able to build services and APIs that can make algorithmic recommendations to users based on the content they are consuming.” This will be possible because Twitter will be keeping track of all clicks (as they note, “in aggregate and not identifiable manner”).

Since they’re tracking these links, Twitter will be able to provide app developers with this data as well. This is obviously a direct assault on Bit.ly — but the content recommendations also seems to be going after the still-unlaunched Bit.ly Now service.

CrunchBase Information

Twitter

bit.ly

Information provided by CrunchBase

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:54 pm

Exalead, The ‘French Google’, Is Acquired For $162 million

Exalead, the search engine that (no kidding) underlies Friendster and has been behind French government attempts to build a platform to rival Google (yes), has been acquired by Dassault Systèmes, a leader in 3D software for big company processes for about €135 million ($161.5m). Exalead was also key member of Quaero, a technology consortium with a five-year budget of €199 million, funded by the French government to develop multimedia search tools. Where is Quaero now?

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:50 pm

Few Health Reform Options Would Have Covered More People At Lower Cost Than New Law

The recently enacted federal health care reform law provides health insurance coverage to the largest number of Americans while keeping federal costs as low as reasonably possible, according to a new analysis from the RAND Corporation.The only alternatives that would have covered more Americans at a lower cost to the federal government were all politically untenable – substantially higher penalties for those who don't comply with mandates, lower government subsidies and less-generous Medicaid expansion, according to research published in the June edition of the journal Health Affairs."Of all the proposals on the table that would expand health insurance to more Americans, the final health reform law included those that covered the largest number of people at the lowest cost to the federal government," said Elizabeth A.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:47 pm

A new HourTime episode, straight from JCK in Vegas

Warning: Podcast includes extreme watch nerdery.

Download MP3

Subscribe in iTunes

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:42 pm

Planes, Trains And Automobiles: Traffic Noise Disturbs Sleep, Affects Morning Performance

Nighttime noise from passing aircraft, trains and automobiles is associated with disturbed sleep and impaired neurobehavioral performance in the morning
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:35 pm

Conn. AG: Google gathered public Wi-Fi data to map

Connecticut's attorney general says Google has informed his office that it collected data over the state's public wireless networks in 2008 for its mapping service. Attorney General...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:34 pm

Conn. AG: Google gathered public Wi-Fi data to map (AP)

AP - Connecticut's attorney general says Google has informed his office that it collected data over the state's public wireless networks in 2008 for its mapping service.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:34 pm

Android App Video Review: Abobe Reader (Appolicious)

Appolicious - Providing a solution to reading PDFs on the Android platform, Adobe Reader sets the standard for experience and quality. Simple to use, pinch and zoom to read your documents. Utilize the Reflow option to conveniently format your document to your handheld's screen.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:33 pm

Pro gamers have brains like fighter pilots, lungs like career smokers

File under: OMG

Well, this isn’t really that surprising. It’s pretty much a natural progression from the lifestyle of a gamer. I still remember the amount of processing power (in my brain, you understand) involved in leading off a crossbow shot according to your ping in original Half-Life multiplayer, or how much precision it took to nail a flying light armor with the lazer in Tribes at 20x zoom. But I also remember the long hours spent achieving that level of brisk cognitive potential. Healthy hours they were not. Can you say tostitos?

A number of pro gamers (sorry, “elite cyber-sportsmen”) were poked and prodded during a study at the University of Essex. Their results were surprising not surprising:

One leading gamer in his twenties appeared to be slim and healthy with a physique similar to an endurance athlete.

But tests revealed he in fact had the lung function and aerobic fitness of a heavy smoker in his sixties.

Oh my. On the bright side, pro gamers rivaled fighter pilots in reaction time, and had the same high self-regard and positive feelings of pro athletes.

Well, it’s really not so hard to figure out, is it? Chess champions doubtless are less than Atlas-like, but are still well-regarded. They seem in some ways a more apt comparison, though the active senses of the gamer are indeed more like a footballer than a pawn-advancer. Well. Let’s take Korea’s example: with a national team and entire channels dedicated to competitive gaming, there’s no question that pro gamers there are regarded as “athletes” in some sense of the word.

Anyway. It’s a strange new world we’re moving into, but regardless of whether a UK University declares gamers sportsmen, we know they’re leet.

[via Tom's Hardware]

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:30 pm

On World Oceans Day, a U.S. Plan for Wind

The Obama Administration uses World Oceans Day and the Gulf oil spill as a launchpad for a new program of offshore wind energy.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:27 pm

Twitter To Begin Wrapping All Links With Official t.co Link Shortener

Big changes are coming to Twitter links. In a post just published on the Twitter blog, the company has announced that it will soon be using a new official link shortening service t.co to wrap all links shared on Twitter. Starting some time this summer, every time you share a link through either the Twitter web client or a third-party, it will be wrapped in a link with the format t.co/******.

So what does this mean for the Twitter ecosystem? Twitter VP of Product Jason Goldman says that the feature serves three purposes. First, it’s going to help Twitter crack down on spam, as the service will be able to accurately monitor the distribution of each link, and it can warn users when it thinks a link may be malicious. Second, it will allow users to better understand where links are going (more on that below). And third, it will help Twitter with analytics, which is related to its Promoted Tweets. Goldman says that Twitter is pre-announcing the feature, which is currently only active with three accounts, to give the developer community a heads up for what’s coming.

The confusing part about t.co is that many users won’t really be aware of it. That’s because Twitter is including metadata with each tweet that allows clients to display the link’s original URL, even when the link is being routed through t.co first. For example, if I shared a link to TechCrunch.com, the link in my tweet would still show up as http://techcrunch.com, despite the fact that users were being silently routed through t.co before they arrived at their favorite tech blog.  One other thing to note: while users will now be seeing expanded links show up in their tweets (which could be quite lengthy), each link will only count as twenty characters against the 140 character maximum. That’s because all t.co links will be exactly twenty characters long.

Goldman says that the “goal is not to build a brand around t.co”. Instead, it’s to increase the transparency of links that are being shared on Twitter.

This isn’t good news for link shorteners like bit.ly, but it isn’t necessarily their death knell either. Goldman says that bit.ly’s value-added services, like analytics and custom shortened domains, will still work properly with t.co, and users can obviously still use bit.ly for more general link shortening purposes. Thing is, most people sharing links through services like bit.ly are doing it because it’s what their Twitter clients do by default — they don’t need analytics or custom domains. For these users there’s now no obvious reason to use these services, because Twitter will be handling the shortened links itself.

Today’s news doesn’t come as a surprise — back in March, Twitter began routing direct messages through a new link shortening service as an anti-phishing mechanism. It didn’t take long for users and developers to question whether Twitter would soon be broadly launching a link shortening service, and Twitter confirmed that it would in April.

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Information provided by CrunchBase

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:24 pm

Methane-Eating Bacteria May Presage ET Life

asukasoryu sends along an intriguing piece in light of our recent discussion of possible signs of life on Saturn's moon Titan. "Researchers have discovered that methane-eating bacteria survive in a unique spring located on Axel Heiberg Island in Canada's extreme north. The subzero water is so salty that it doesn't freeze despite the cold, and it has no consumable oxygen in it. There are, however, big bubbles of methane that come to the surface. Lyle Whyte, McGill University microbiologist, explains that the so-called Lost Hammer spring supports microbial life, that the spring is similar to possible past or present springs on Mars, and that therefore they too could support life."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:20 pm

Snakes may be in decline worldwide: study

Distinct populations of snake species on three continents have crashed over the last decade, raising fears that the reptiles may be in global decline, according to a study published...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:16 pm

A Balanced Protein Diet Can Reduce Accumulation Of Nitrogen On Dairy Cattle Farms By Up To 35%

Feed for reducing nitrogenIn the second study, the research group of Neiker-Tecnalia analysed the efficient use of nitrogen in the animal through a greater use of commercial concentrates and, thereby, the energy content of the diet. Afterwards, they studied the excretion of N and its concentration in the resulting manure. In this study a comparison was made of diets with low forage content and high concentrate content (ratio 45:55), usually employed on intensified dairy farms, with diets involving greater forage content and less concentrate content (ratio 75:25), considered less energetic but more sustainable from an environmental and feeding perspective. The resulting manures from the different diets were subsequently applied on a grassland in order to evaluate the volatilisation of the nitrogen-based gases, ammonia (NH3) involved in the acidification and eutrofisation of aquatic and edaphic ecosystems as well as nitrous oxide (N2O) and nitric oxide (NO), involved in the greenhouse effect and destruction of the ozone layer.The researchers demonstrated that rations with higher forage content reduce the voluntary ingestion of food, because the animal is satisfied because of the fibre content of the forage. As a consequence, the nitrogen intake in this diet is also reduced and, consequently, the excretion is lower, which contributes to minimise the ammoniacal nitrogen (N-NH4+) in the resulting manure. However, this reduction in the ingestion of food and nitrogen also causes a loss in milk production.The alteration of the nitrogen composition of the manure (N-NH4+) can have environmental implications depending on the handling carried out by the farmer in the fields. Emissions of nitrogen gases (ammonia, nitrous oxide and nitric oxide) to the atmosphere after applying manures obtained with high or low forage content diets are similar when the same N-NH4+ doses are applied on-field. After applying 120 kg N-NH4+, nitrogen gas emissions were 18.7 kg N per hectare in the case of diets with high content of forage (14,8%), while in the case of diets with low forage content, 11.5 kg of N per hectare (9.6%) were emitted. These data confirmed that between 10% and 15% of N-NH4+ applied in the field will be emitted in the form of nitrogen to the atmosphere, mostly (60%) as ammonia.Less protein, less ammonia
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:09 pm

Apple announces AT&T will waive contract requirements and crashes AT&T’s website

Section: Apple, Communications, Cellular Providers, Smartphones

While giving his keynote address at WWDC yesterday, Steve Jobs mentioned that AT&T will relax its contract requirements for those wanting the new iPhone.

“Any existing iPhone customer eligible for an upgrade between today and the end of this year will be eligible for our best pricing for iPhone 4, $199 and $299, with a two-year term commitment,” AT&T said in a statement issued shortly after Jobs left the WWDC stage.

Not long after the news broke, AT&T’s website crashed. The account management section became completely unreachable, presumably due to a rush of customers trying to check their eligibility. For several hours the site returned a variety of error messages from “Maintenance in Progress” to “No backend server available for connection: timed out after 100 seconds or idempotent set to OFF.”  Service resumed several hours later.

One could speculate that AT&T decided to relax the upgrade rules in an effort to lessen the sting its earlier announcement regarding the end of unlimited data plans caused. Apparently they feel that discontinuing unlimited data will solve their network issues, but it seems much more likely that once Verizon starts offering the iPhone AT&T customers will leave in droves.

Read [PCWorld]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:08 pm

Unsure how to vote in California primary election, many turn to Twitter (The Christian Science Monitor)

The Christian Science Monitor - The voter information pamphlet at the Studio City Recreation polling place for Tuesday’s California primary election is 80 pages long, and as poll worker Angelica Torres says with a laugh, “it’s just too big, too much.”
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:05 pm

Cthulhu cozy keeps your phone safe from the prying eyes of mortal men

Mmmm… Lovecraftian.

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:00 pm

Hon Hai Downplays Wage Increases [Voices]

By Ting-I Tsai and Lorraine Luk, Reporters, The Wall Street Journal

Amid rising concerns about profitability and a tumbling stock price, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Chairman Terry Gou downplayed Tuesday the impact of recent wage increases and said it is accelerating automation to reduce its reliance on labor.

Separately, the chairman of its Foxconn International Holdings Ltd. handset manufacturing unit, which assembles handsets for Motorola Inc. (MOT) and Nokia Corp. (NOK), told shareholders in Hong Kong Tuesday it plans to conclude price negotiations for its products with clients in the third quarter to mitigate the impact from recent wage increases, suggesting price increases may be in store.

The wage-increase phenomenon “is negative to [Hon Hai's profit margin] in the short term, but we believe it is positive in the long term,” Mr. Gou said Tuesday at the company’s annual shareholders meeting.

Hon Hai, which employs some 800,000 workers in China, is now accelerating automation to reduce its reliance on labor.

“In the long term, the number of our employee might decrease,” he said, declining to be specific about how the company might want to adjust its work force.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:45 pm

Spansion Schedules Call to Discuss Second Quarter Guidance

SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Spansion Inc., a leading provider of Flash memory solutions, today announced it will host a conference call to provide fiscal second quarter guidance and an update on the impact of fresh start accounting on future financials.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:42 pm

Woody and Buzz star in a Google Search Story

Hopefully some of you have seen one or two of our Search Story videos. We’ve been blown away by the creativity and brilliance of everyone that shared their own search story using the Search Stories Video Creator. It’s been a pleasure to see how all kinds of people use search to tell tales—whether silly, inspiring, true or imagined.

It seemed like the next logical step was to ask the world’s best storytellers to get involved, so I called up my friend at Pixar. He liked the idea, the writers at Pixar were into it—and a few days later, we were brainstorming with the minds behind WALL-E, Finding Nemo and, of course, Toy Story. We’re huge fans of their work, so getting to explore what the Toy Story gang would discover using Google has been pretty special. Together, we ended up creating a short video that looks at Google through the eyes of Andy’s toys and how they deal with the fact that Andy’s about to leave for college.

A big thank you to the nice folks at Pixar for their spirit and their sense of collaboration. Check it out now online and in theaters nationwide kicking off Toy Story 3, opening June 18.

We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did making it. It's only viewable in the U.S. for now, but we hope to share it internationally soon.



Update 5:55PM: Clarified that the YouTube video is currently only available in the U.S.

Posted by Robert Wong, Creative Director, Creative Lab

Source: The Official Google Blog | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:35 pm

2 In 3 Misunderstand Gas Mileage; Here's Why

thecarchik sends in this piece, which was published last March but remains timely: "OK, so here's a little test: Which saves more gasoline, going from 10 to 20 mpg, or going from 33 to 50 mpg? If you're like most Americans, you picked the second one. But, in fact, that's exactly backwards. Over any given mileage, replacing a 10-mpg vehicle with one that gets 20 mpg saves five times the gasoline that replacing a 33-mpg vehicle with one that gets 50 does. Last summer, Duke University's Fuqua School of Business released a study that shows how much damage comes from using MPG instead of consumption to measure how green a car is. Management professors Richard Larick and Jack Soll's experiments proved that consumers thought fuel consumption was cut at an even rate as mileage increased."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:34 pm

Apple’s A4 ain’t that special

I really don’t understand what the big deal is about the A4. ARM designed the chip, Apple customized it, and Samsung built it. How is that any different from any other phone or device manufacturer? The A4 variant (an unfortunate name considering the A* naming convention in ARM chips) is just an A8-based chip with a setup specific to the iPhone or iPad’s PCB layout and processing needs. Apple doesn’t have fairy dust to sprinkle on it to make it anything more than that.

That said, however, there’s a lot more to a device than making the right hardware decisions. The Samsung Wave, it has been revealed, uses a very similar Samsung-made (obviously) 1GHz ARM A8 processor, putting it as near Apple’s A4 as can be. But do you think you’re going to have a similar user experience? No, silly! So much depends upon the UI designers and coders that the processor is really only a secondary consideration.

In other words, the processor (magical A4 or not) doesn’t make anything work on its own — it just provides a sandbox for the coders and designers to work in. That’s very important, but it’s very far from the whole story. This is why there are puzzling differences between phones with similar specs. Could a memory leak in a program not get fixed in Android 1.6 on a G1, where perhaps an outdated RAM caching technique is still in use? Sure, this kind of thing happens all the time. Apple is unique in that they control almost the entire process of creating a device from start to finish. You see something similar in the Zune HD, which I loved, but it also has an advanced ARM processor with a special name, and again, it’s perhaps the least visibly important part of the device.

Ironically, when the iPad and iPhone 4 come out, a large amount of attention is paid to the processor and display, things which Apple almost certainly had very little to do with! Sure, their curation of the devices’ hardware is impeccable, but the “magic” doesn’t come from the A4, any more than the snappiness of Google something comes from the brand of memory they use in their servers. On that note, it is only fair to add, however, that Google’s unorthodox server technique does deserve some credit, but their database and crawling algorithms are the real stars.

If you want to give credit where credit is due, thank ARM and Samsung for making excellent hardware, and thank Apple for taking advantage of it correctly. I have my issues with Apple, but one thing they’ve always managed to do is get the absolute most out of a given hardware setup — RIM, HTC, Sony, Nokia, all these guys would take the same bits and get an inferior product. It really is just a fact at this point.

The A4 is a nice piece of hardware, don’t get me wrong — but there’s more to a device than its processor, and it seems like a lot of the other stuff gets lost in the background when the spotlight shines on a single aspect. When it comes to the A4, it seems like the spotlight is completely arbitrary, since so much of the A4 is shared by other devices on the market right now. A little perspective shows where the credit truly lies in a great device.

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:27 pm

NJIT Professor Tells Architects Building Practices To Withstand Hurricanes

Architecture for Humanity invites NJIT professor to help them in HaitiRima Taher, an expert in the design of low-rise buildings for extreme winds and hurricane, hopes her phone won't ring much this hurricane season.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:24 pm

Microsoft, Adobe fix security flaws (Reuters)

Reuters - Microsoft Corp issued one of its biggest security fixes on Tuesday, including a repair to its widely used Excel spreadsheet for flaws that could allow hackers to take control of a user's PC.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:15 pm

Safari 5's 'Reader' Nudges Web Publishers to App Store

Steve Jobs didn't mention during his Monday presentation that Apple Safari 5's Reader application includes a prominent ad-blocking feature that strips advertisements and other design elements from any web page that appears to be "an article," whereas if the same content appears within a custom Apple iOS app, ads will appear as normal.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:15 pm

Facebook Comes to Yahoo, But Yahoo Not Going Away

Yahoo adds Facebook updates to its homepage and e-mail service. But admitting defeat in the social networking fight is actually an encouraging sign of strength for the struggling giant.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:15 pm

New Chinese Internet Document Redlines BS Meter [Digital Daily]

Though it has given no indication otherwise, China would like the world to know that it has no plans to allow free access to online content–Google’s “new approach” to the country be damned. In a lengthy white paper titled “The Internet in China,” China’s State Council Information Office reaffirmed the government’s longstanding commitment to censorship.

“The Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting the safe flow of Internet information, actively guides people to manage Web sites in accordance with the law and use the Internet in a wholesome and correct way,” the paper reads. “The Decision of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee on Guarding Internet Security, Regulations on Telecommunications of the People’s Republic of China and Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services stipulate that no organization or individual may produce, duplicate, announce or disseminate information having the following contents…”

What follows is a list so broad and vague it could easily be applied to nearly any speech Beijing finds undesirable: “subverting state power…propagating superstitious ideas…spreading rumors…and other contents forbidden by laws and administrative regulations.”

But steer clear of those and you’re free to say what you like because “Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet”–according to this white paper, anyway.

The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China confers on Chinese citizens the right to free speech. With their right to freedom of speech on the Internet protected by the law, they can voice their opinions in various ways on the Internet. Vigorous online ideas exchange is a major characteristic of China’s Internet development, and the huge quantity of BBS posts and blog articles is far beyond that of any other country….The Chinese government has actively created conditions for the people to supervise the government, and attaches great importance to the Internet’s role in supervision….The Internet provides unprecedented convenience and a direct channel for the people to exercise their right to know, to participate, to be heard and to oversee, and is playing an increasingly important role in helping the government get to know the people’s wishes, meet their needs and safeguard their interests. The Chinese government is determined to unswervingly safeguard the freedom of speech on the Internet enjoyed by Chinese citizens in accordance with the law.

And if “safeguarding” freedom of speech involves, say, blocking YouTube, Picasa and a bunch of other services offered by Google (GOOG)? Well, I guess that’s just the Chinese government “voicing its opinion” in this “vigorous online ideas exchange.”

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:14 pm

Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc. Announces June 4, 2010 Federal Circuit Court of Appeals Ruling in its Litigation with Advanced Micro Devices

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y., June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Graphics Properties Holdings, Inc. ("GPHI") announced today a significant favorable ruling in its litigation with ATI Technologies and Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD).
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:07 pm

Industry Experts Join ReadyTalk for Free Webinar on Leveraging Social Media

DENVER, June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- ReadyTalk, a leader in integrated audio and web conferencing services, is bringing social media experts together in a free webinar to discuss ways to leverage social media networks to help event sponsors draw more attendees, better engage the audience, and continue contact once the event has ended. Social Media: Promote, Engage, Leverage, Repeat takes place on Wednesday, June 9, at 3 p.m.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:04 pm

International Game Technology Announces Quarterly Dividend

LAS VEGAS, June 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- International Game Technology (NYSE: IGT) announced today that its Board of Directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of six cents ($0.06) per share, payable on July 9, 2010 to shareholders of record on June 22, 2010. About IGT International Game Technology (NYSE: IGT) is a leader in the design, development and manufacture of gaming machines and systems products worldwide.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:03 pm

New Features Bring Safari 5 Up to Speed

Hands-on review of the newest version of Apple's browser: Webmonkey puts Safari 5 through the paces, and finds it well worth the upgrade.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:00 pm

Microsoft announces new app policies for Windows Phone

Section: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile

Microsoft has announced new policies for its Windows Phone Marketplace in preparation for the upcoming Windows Phone 7. Developers will be required to pay a $99 a year fee, which will entitle them to submit up to 5 free apps. Additional free apps will cost them $19.99 each.  For paid apps, Microsoft requires a 70/30 split.

Unlike Apple’s App Store for the iPhone, Microsoft will allow developers to have trial apps and give them several business plan options including free, paid, ad supported and more.

As far as prohibited apps go, Microsoft is following in Apple’s footsteps and banning pornographic material and will also reject any app with material related to drug use, excessive violence, gun sales, and criminal activities. Hopefully they have learned from Apple’s mistakes and won’t end up mired in the same controversies. Stay tuned.

Read [PCWorld]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:56 pm

US Confirms Underwater Oil Plume

oxide7 writes "An underwater three-dimensional map of the oil spill is closer to becoming a reality, now that the US has for the first time confirmed the discovery of a subsurface oil plume resulting from the ruptured BP well. The government agency in charge of ocean science has received the first of several expected reports from university investigators aboard research ships detailing specific locations where oil has been found below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. The government, which denied reports of giant underwater oil plumes in mid-May, said researchers at the time had not confirmed the presence of conglomerated oil." The New York Times talked with scientists on a two-week mission in the Gulf and reported them "awed" at the size and density of the underwater plume.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:46 pm

Liability Issues Limiting Recreational Use Of Public School Facilities

State laws need revision, according to new studyEncouraging physical activity is vital to positive health outcomes and is a worthwhile public health goal.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:44 pm

Experts: Kill, Don’t Clean, Oiled Birds

Wildlife experts are suggesting it is more humane and less costly to kill doomed, oiled wildlife.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:31 pm

PA Cyber to Graduate 1,032 in Ceremonies at Pittsburgh, Harrisburg

Online school launches alumni organization PITTSBURGH, June 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For many of the 1,032 graduating seniors in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, the school's 10th commencement exercises this week at Pittsburgh and Harrisburg will mark the first and last time they ever meet. Increasing numbers of graduates, however, have already met through PA Cyber's numerous educational field trips, at social and recreational outings organized by the school's Family Link program, or when brought together for testing, tutoring, training, enrichment and gifted-talented programs. PA Cyber is even launching an alumni organization so classmates who may not have known each other in high school can meet and share common interests after graduation. "Every year at graduation we learn of students who have met their best friends through cyber school activities or even are dating," said PA Cyber CEO and founder Dr.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:28 pm

On Deck Capital Founder & CEO Mitch Jacobs Announced as a Finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year(R) Award 2010

NEW YORK, June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Ernst & Young LLP has announced Mitch Jacobs Founder and CEO of leading small business technology platform On Deck Capital as a Finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® Award 2010 in the Metro New York Area.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:11 pm

iPhone Hacked to Run Android 2.2

If you are stuck with an old iPhone but wish you had an Android device, there’s a way to combine the two, creating a smartphone with the body of the former and the brains of the latter.

A recent hack shows how to run the latest version of Google’s mobile OS, Android 2.2 aka FroYo, on Apple’s iPhone 3G. The mod still has a few bugs and isn’t stable enough for everyday use, but it’s a first step towards creating a hacked Android operating system for the iPhone.

Android 2.2 isn’t widely available on devices yet. Google made the operating system official last month, and while it’s available to developers, it hasn’t made it to many customers. A few Nexus One users are the only ones to have gotten the upgrade.

This is not the first time someone has attempted to port the Google-designed Android operating system onto an iPhone. Last month, a PC World editor documented his progress in getting the Android OS onto his Apple phone.

DIYers are now boldly modding phones so they are not limited by what smartphone makers offer. For instance, some intrepid smartphone users have hacked their Windows Mobile phones to run Android, giving them a new OS without any expense. It also offers access to new features and to applications in the Android Market.

The latest Android-iPhone isn’t as sophisticated. It only allows the modified iPhone to send text messages and make calls. It does not support Wi-Fi and the phone can get hot in just a few minutes of use.

And as the video makes it clear, it is really not to be attempted at this point unless you are a developer or a curious tinkerer. But as a proof of concept, it’s pretty amazing.

The Gadgets DNA site had instructions on how you can do it, but the site is inaccessible now. Count on a more stable version of the mod coming out in a few days.

Photo: Closari/Flickr

See Also:

• Photo Gallery: Hands-On With the iPhone 4
• Apple Unveils High-Resolution, Videoconferencing iPhone 4
• Apple iOS 4 vs. Google Android 2.2: How Do They Stack Up?
• Editor Gets Android Running on an iPhone

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:07 pm

Hacked iPhone Runs Android 2.2

A hack shows how to run the latest version of Google's mobile OS on Apple's iPhone 3G.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:07 pm

Hacked iPhone Runs Android 2.2

A hack shows how to run the latest version of Google's mobile OS on Apple's iPhone 3G.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:07 pm

Opinion: Fight for your gaming rights, sign the ECA’s petition

FROM GAMERTELL - Don’t let the government control what games we can rent and buy by signing the ECA’s petition to protect our rights as gamers…
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:04 pm

Former Prosecutor: Google Wi-Fi Snafu 'Likely' Illegal

Google's W-Fi snafu is "likely" illegal, a former federal prosecutor says. Not because of the siphoned content, but because of accompanying metadata.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:04 pm

Wireless Woes Rain 'Fail' on Steve Jobs Keynote

Steve Jobs' introduction of the iPhone 4 encountered a couple of bloopers, thanks to wireless problems.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm

Wireless Woes Rain ‘Fail’ on Steve Jobs’ Keynote

Gizmodo’s leak of the iPhone 4 already made Monday’s Apple keynote slightly awkward. But the most uncomfortable moment was when part of Steve Jobs’ iPhone 4 demo failed due to Wi-Fi issues.

Watching the video below (shot by IDG), you can almost feel the increasing frustration of the CEO, and you can only imagine what was going on backstage to resolve the problem.

After about a minute of troubleshooting — and a failed attempt to connect to AT&T’s 3G network instead — Jobs explained that over 500 Wi-Fi devices were being used in the crowd, likely causing interference with his demo unit. He even asked bloggers to stop doing their jobs for the sake of the demo.

“All you bloggers need to turn off your base stations,” Jobs said. “If you want to see the demos, shut off your laptops, turn off all these MiFi base stations and put them on the floor, please.”

At one point Jobs asked Scott Forstall, vice president of iPhone (now “iOS”) software, if he had any suggestions, and someone in the crowd shouted “Verizon!”

Google also ran into similar network problems that stalled its demonstration of Google TV last month. In Apple’s case, Jobs was referring to users of Verizon’s MiFi, a device that creates a portable hot spot that can be shared by up to 5 users. Some smartphones, such as the Palm Pre and some modified Android phones, are also capable of serving as a hot spot. The iPhone currently permits tethering (a one-to-one connection with a laptop) but AT&T has not permitted that service for its customers, and the iPhone can only act as a hot spot if it has been jailbroken.

With over 500 Wi-Fi hot spots in a room of 5,000 people, it’s a sign of how popular hot-spot–sharing devices or features have become.

To be fair, if Verizon were the iPhone’s carrier, it would likely suffer from the same issues as AT&T. But the problem of an overloaded cellular network would be mitigated if the iPhone were available on multiple carriers as opposed to just one. During his glitchy keynote, Jobs was probably feeling our wireless woes more than any other day.

See Also:

• Live Blog: Apple’s iPhone-Centric WWDC 2010
• Apple Unveils High-Resolution, Videoconferencing iPhone 4
• Showdown: iPhone 4 vs. HTC Evo 4G
• Photo Gallery: Hands-On With the iPhone 4
• Will iPhone 4’s Audio and Video Chat Finally Break the Voice Calling Scam?
• Why the iPhone 4 Camera Is So Promising

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:59 pm

Review: Wiebetech ToughTech Mini-Q secure hard drive

Short version: A plain-looking, but robust drive for the security-conscious interface fiend in us all. Or at least those of us with cash to spare.

Features:

• Quad interface (2xFireWire 800, 1xeSATA/USB 2.0
• 128-bit AES encryption
• Heavy duty metal case
• Removable drive tray
• MSRP: $180 without drive, $250 for 250GB

Pros:

• Straightforward encryption
• Nice chunky case
• Plenty of connection options

Cons:

• Quite expensive
• Bus power only through FW800
• Not the most attractive drive

Full review:

This little drive is the epitome of practicality in some ways, and the opposite of that in others. Essentially, if you’re willing to make the necessary concessions its whole system (and, I’m sure they hope, convert your whole workplace to it), you’ve got yourself an extremely nice little device.

Unfortunately, if you aren’t willing to change things up, then this drive isn’t for you. That’s not a bad thing — you’re just not the target for it and it’s not the device you need. I may as well say right now, if you need compact, a bus-powered USB drive to keep photos and random junk on, the Mini-Q is not for you. Grab a little WD My Passport or something. However, if you want security and a customizable full system for storage, you might give the Mini-Q a look.

On first glance, it appears to be just a rather plain-looking, 2.5″ external hard drive. Its appearance is certainly one of its faults: while the metal is reassuring, the styling is uninspired, even a little clunky. It’s also heavy: with drive included, it weighs noticeably more than other 2.5″ drives. On the other hand, it feels more solid. The casing is actual metal and you can see the screws (and tighten them if you like), and although it’s not designed with ruggedness in mind per se, it resisted a lot more than other drives when I twisted and crushed it a bit. It’s homely but well-constructed, is all I’m trying to say.

Things look a little brighter when you turn the thing around. The whole back side is inputs: a combo USB/eSATA port and dual FireWire 800 ports that can be daisy-chained. There’s a DC input as well, never a good sign for portability. But the take-away point here is that you’re pretty much prepared for whatever system you need to connect to — as long as you have power. A double USB cord for power and data is included, but it’s bulky and who likes doing that anyway? Bus power works over FireWire, which is nice, but as FireWire is rapidly disappearing, that’s less of a comfort than it could be.

On the front — what’s this? Another USB interface? How weird! Ah, my young friend. How little you know of the ways of secure drives. No, that is something completely different. You saw in the features above, I hope, that this thing has 128-bit AES encryption? Well! The encryption key is stored on a completely separate device, which you see to the right. Without that little guy plugged into the slot, the drive won’t even be recognized. With the key in, it acts like any other drive. Every Mini-Q’s key is unique, and every Mini-Q comes with three duplicate keys — one for you, one for a spouse or lawyer perhaps, and one for an undisclosed location. It’s a similar system to the rest of Wiebetech’s secure storage line, so if you like one, you might like the rest.

The system worked perfectly well when I tried it out; you can leave the key in or simply “unlock” the drive and remove the key once the little green light goes on. This makes it ideal for a secure drive that must be loaned out to employees or whatnot; as soon as the drive is unplugged, it locks again and cannot be accessed until the key is put in again. It also works as a good repository for sensitive computer files (electronic receipts, tax documents and such) that need to be accessed by multiple people but would be catastrophic to lose.

The Mini-Q has one more feature, a rare one: it’s designed to allow for drive replacement. If the drive inside is damaged or you just need more space, simply use the included screwdriver to perform a hard-drive-ectomy and replace it with another 2.5″ drive (9.5mm maximum height). Why not? So it’s technically a drive enclosure as well as a drive. Good to know.

Conclusion

There’s not much to say in terms of pros and cons here: it’s more about whether it fits your needs. As a secure and heavy-duty drive for a business or security-conscious individual, it’s great. As a handy go-everywhere drive, it’s no good. For my money, security and convenience are best combined in Lenovo’s keypad drive, but the Mini-Q is certainly more robust in the interface and accessibility department. Unfortunately, at around $180 without drive, it’s also significantly more expensive. If you can write it off as a company expense, great, but for an individual it’s just too much machine and too much money.

Product page: WiebeTech ToughTech mini-Q

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:48 pm

Sprint EVO 4G sells out online, nation wide

Selling out of a new device in one or two real stores is one thing — they generally only have 20 or 30 handsets to begin with. But running out of stock for your online storefront? That’s an impressive feat.

With that said: If you were planning on running home from work today and ordering yourself an EVO, you might want to take a deep breath before clicking through the jump.

Yep: Sprint.com is entirely out of EVO 4Gs. They’ve got more on the way, of course, but there’s no ETA just yet. Making things worse, it seems like meatspace stores are still entirely stripped, as well; I just called around a dozen of them, and they’re all claiming to have sold their last EVO days ago, with small shipments coming in sporadically.

Glad to see that Sprint’s seeing some success here, but unless they want people getting impatient andgiving in to that new guy, they better get them back in stock quick — or at least fire up another series of pre-orders.

[Thanks Dave!]

Source: MobileCrunch | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:47 pm

WWDC 2010 - Keynote wrap-up

Section: Apple, Communications, Cellphones, Mobile

Should your schedule not allowed you to view the meticulous live blogging events from 12:00pm CST to nearly 2:00pm, here are a few highlights and notes you should know before walking up to the water cooler this morning.

iPad Updates

The iPad has sold 2 million units in three months, despite only being on sale in 10 countries. The attempt to downplay “only 10” countries shows an effort of modesty but either way you look out at, the iPad is hot.

A few updates will be rolling out later this month that will allow users to make bookmarks, add virtual post-it notes to what they are reading and finally PDF’s will be readable. Rejoice!

For the Movie Junkie and Gamer

Can’t get enough Facebook or more specifically FarmVille in your life? That void has now been filled. Farmville developer Zynga yesterday announced the iPhone app that will allow you to build and maintain your farm on the go. A mixed exuberance and groan will likely follow.

Netflix is coming to the app store and surprisingly for free. Add to your queue and stream on your iPad or iPhone and the ability to switch back and forth.

Finally, Tap Tap Revenge just got some serious competition with Activision releasing Guitar Hero for the iPhone. Ability to make custom rockers and post content directly to Facebook will be built in.

iPhone 4

The new version is 24% thinner than original.

Front and rear facing camera’s with LED flash. The new camera also shoots HD video in 720p at 30fps. Done recording? Edit the video you just shot with iMovie for the iPhone. Available for $4.99 in the app store. The new camera also supports video calls over a WiFi network. Functionality is built into every new iPhone.

Thanks to the new A4 processor and bigger battery, iPhone 4 has a 40% increase in talk time to 7 hours, 10 hours of video, 40 hours of music, 10 hours of wifi browsing, and 300 hours of standby time.

Pricing will be $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB and available in black or white

iPhone Software is now iOS4

The newest built has 1500 developer APIs and 100 new user features. Most notable features are multitasking, folders for grouping apps and new exchange capabilities that will now support multiple accounts.

New Mobile Advertising Platform - iAds

Keeps you in your app instead of navigation away. Idea is to allow developers to keep developing lost cost apps and remain profitable. Apple sells and hosts the ads.

Read [thenextweb] Image courtesy of gdgt.com

 

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:42 pm

America Versus the UFO Hacker

Rob writes "Gary McKinnon, still suffering from Asperger's syndrome, depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, has one last chance to avoid extradition from the UK to the US to face charges of hacking into NASA and Pentagon computers in search of information on UFOs. Will the new UK government keep its word and help him avoid a savage punishment? The New Statesman has a survey of the history and McKinnon's prospects."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:40 pm

Icebreaker Voyage To Probe Climate Change Impact On Arctic

NASA's first dedicated oceanographic field campaign goes to sea June 15 to take an up-close look at how changing conditions in the Arctic are affecting the ocean's chemistry and ecosystems that play a critical role in global climate change.The "Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment" mission, or ICESCAPE, will investigate the impacts of climate change on the ecology and biogeochemistry of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:39 pm

Architectural criticism of couch-cushion forts

We greatly admire the use of coffee table as lateral moment-frame in this application. The solution is both formal and fun, offering the users a sequence of experiences beginning with the entry, to vaulted ceiling, to raised deck. Grade A-

Adorable! Also, it's nice to see that most of these budding young architects have avoided the energy-sucking pitfalls of the all-glass facade.

Build LLC: Couch Cushion Architecture: A Critical Analysis

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:38 pm

Cogent Communications CEO to Present at William Blair's 30th Annual Growth Stock Conference

WASHINGTON, June 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cogent Communications Group, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:32 pm

TI updates second-quarter 2010 business outlook

DALLAS, June 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In a scheduled update to its business outlook for the second quarter of 2010, Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today revised its expected ranges for revenue and earnings per share (EPS). The company currently expects its financial results to fall within the following ranges: Revenue: $3.45 - $3.59 billion, compared with the prior range of $3.31 - $3.59 billionEPS: $0.60 - $0.64, compared with the prior range of $0.56 - $0.64.The company will hold a conference call at 4 p.m.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:30 pm

Facebook's Zuckerberg: Out to Change the World? - TIME

Brisbane Times

Facebook's Zuckerberg: Out to Change the World? TIME That's the take from journalist David Kirkpatrick, who got unprecedented access to the Facebook founder as part of his new book, “The Facebook Effect.” In the book, released today, Kirkpatrick charts the fascinating story of Facebook's development, ... Facebook Founder Has Nothing to Hide Except Privacy Blind SpotBusinessWeek Book about Facebook's beginnings may dim spotlight on privacyComputerworld Company on the Verge of a Social BreakthroughNew York Times ABC News -USA Today -San Francisco Chronicle all 147 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:27 pm

Fingerstache temporary tattoos and photo contest

BB pals Gama-Go have just released their ingenious Fingerstache package of mustache-shaped temporary tattoos. They're just $5 for a pack of 19 mustaches in a variety of handsome styles. To support the wider fingerstache phenomenon, Gama-Go is also holding a Fingerstache Photo Contest on Flickr. Prizes include a $50 gift certificate, packs of the Fingerstache temporary tattoos, and their kooky Mt Stachemore Floati Pen. All of this fingerstache hoopla makes me want to shave my real facial hair and go with the faux. Fingerstache Photo Contest


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:22 pm

Are you eligible for an iPhone 4 upgrade? Here’s how to check

Love it or hate it, the new iPhone is coming on June 24th. For a lot of people, that means it’s time to shell out a fat wad of cash to get their latest gadget fix.

Just how fat said wad of cash is, however, depends on various factors, including (but not limited to): your monthly bill total, when you bought your device, the weather, your birth stone, and whether or not you can wink your eyes without moving the rest of your face.

Fortunately, there’s a pretty easy way to determine your upgrade eligibility without having to deal with any of this.

If you’re eligible for an upgrade, you’ll be able to pick up a 16GB or 32GB iPhone 4 for $199 or $299 respectively, if you’re willing to sign up for another 2 year contract. If you’re not eligible yet, you can still get an “Early Upgrade” discount in exchange for a renewed contract, but you’ll be paying $399 or $499 respectively. If you’d pay full price and walk out the door contract-fee, it’ll set you back $599 or $699 respectively.

Now, on to how to check your eligibility. There are actually two methods: the first requires you have your iPhone (or other AT&T phone) nearby, the second does not.

Method #1:

1. Grab your iPhone
2. Open up the phone app, dial *639#, hit the call button
3. Wait a few minutes. Within about 5 minutes, you’ll receive a text from AT&T telling you whether or not you’re good to upgrade

Method #2:

1. Go to this page on AT&T’s customer support center.
2. Log in.
3. On the right side, there’s a link in the “Quick Links” section which reads “Check Upgrade Options”. As you could probably guess, click that.
4. Ta-da!

Even if you’re not eligible today, check back in a few days. I wasn’t eligible for an upgrade last night — today, I am. It’s all sorcery, I tell you.

[Method 1 via iLounge]

Source: MobileCrunch | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:17 pm

WWE finally has a YouTube account (and with full episodes)

I must be seeing things… is that an official WWE YouTube page, and one that already has last night’s episode of Monday Night Raw online? This is so unlike WWE, embracing technology. They must have hired someone new in recent weeks, someone who told them that, you know, the Internet isn’t merely for “geeks” anymore.

So the YouTube page is up and running, and there are, in fact, past episodes of shows like Monday Night Raw and Friday Night Smackdown. Commercial-free, too.

This is a big deal, not necessarily because WWE is now offering shows online, but because WWE is offering shows online. This could be the most technology-averse entertainment company out there. They make the record labels look like 13-year-old Internet whiz kids. Case in point: the company only just recently launched an iPhone App, several years after the App Store’s début. (Accent over the e to show my fanciness.)

Another piece of evidence: play-by-play announcer Michael Cole, during the first few weeks of NXT, teasing people who use the Internet, specifically Twitter. Good one, WWE: you’re so desperate to be considered mainstream entertainment and yet you bash a tool that so many celebrities use to great effect. (You’ll note that WWE Superstars now tweet with reckless abandon.)

Now, I could use this moment to praise last night’s angle, embedded here, but I get the feeling that, oh, maybe 2 percent of you will have any idea what I’m talking about; I’ve already used up enough of your time.

If there’s one truism in pro-wrestling it’s this: everybody loves a good invasion angle.

via WrestlingObserver.com (obviously)

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:00 pm

Lenovo's Watt Whiffing Gaming Powerhouse Is Switch-Hitter

Power conservation or gaming performance? You can have both with the slide of a switch on the Lenovo Ideapad Y460.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Jun 2010 | 2:00 pm

Tibetans Carry Unique Gene to Combat Mountain Sickness

A genetic variant specific to Tibetans may explain why they can live at such high altitudes.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 1:57 pm

Studies Prove BPA Can Cross Placenta To Fetuses

Totes McGotes writes "From canned food to plastic bottles, Bisphenol-A seems to be cropping up everywhere, and now two new studies show that BPA freely crosses the placenta from pregnant mother to fetus. Plus, the research found that chemical transformations occur in the fetus allowing inactive BPA to be converted to the active form."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Jun 2010 | 1:53 pm

Apple WWDC keynote Wi-Fi fail: Glenn Fleishman explains what happened

Wireless technology writer Glenn Fleishman has a good, technically precise, but very readable (for non-engineers) explanation of exactly what went wrong with the wireless internet connectivity in the room during Steve Jobs' keynote yesterday at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference.

Our Dean Putney and Rob Beschizza were live-photoblogging the event, and as they reported, that connectivity problem caused conspicuous glitches during Mr. Jobs' on-stage presentation.

Apple apparently did offer a public Wi-Fi network at the WWDC launch, according to media and attendees I've polled. And those who tried it said that network did work initially. But with so much media in the audience, and the history of conference/event Wi-Fi networks having glitches at peak times--with many people liveblogging and uploading photos from the event--those who had MiFis chose to use those instead.

Wi-Fi can cope with a lot of so-called interference, but the protocol wasn't designed to handle hundreds of overlapping networks in a small space. (Interference is really the limits of a radio to distinguish signals out of noise, not a physical property of radio waves.)

Five Hundred Wi-Fi Networks Walk into a Bar (Future Tense)

Photo: Dean Putney


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Jun 2010 | 1:51 pm

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock controllers will have customizable bodies

FROM GAMERTELL - The new guitar controller has a swappable body but is it worth buying a new controller?
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Jun 2010 | 1:51 pm

Was FaceTime created for Verizon network?

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

Another keynote down, another time we’ve been jilted by Apple and AT&T.  Where is our Verizon iPhone?  Should we just give up and forget about it or did Steve Jobs try to tell us something in code?

“We need to work a little bit with the carriers.” -Steve Jobs

How frustrating must it be for Apple, that their chosen partner isn’t ready for this “one of the chosen 9” features?  Feeling more like a ball and chain?  Did development not talk with AT&T?  Or is this an attempt to keep somewhat current in Europe and Asia?

Or is it something more?  Is it Apple giving yet another example of why another carrier is needed in the US?  Or was “this will be WiFi in 2010” a coded message letting us know that Verizon will be online and ready to go then?  I don’t expect AT&T to suddenly be ready for FaceTime in 6 months, do you?

Read: [Appletell]

 

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Jun 2010 | 1:38 pm

Is Global Warming Real?

The "controversy" behind global warming is understandable, given the effects that climate legislation would have on our carbon-based economy. But the science is incontrovertible.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 1:36 pm

Prices Slashed on Current iPhone, But Don’t Buy One

While we wait for the iPhone 4 to land in stores late June, Apple and AT&T have slashed prices of the current 3GS models. But that doesn’t mean you should buy them.

The iPhone 3GS on Monday saw a price cut: The 16-GB iPhone 3GS now costs $150, down from $200, and the 32-GB model costs $200, down from $300. AT&T highlighted the price change on its website with a tag: “New prices on iPhone 3GS.”

But when the iPhone 4 arrives June 24, a new 8-GB model of the iPhone 3GS will become available for just $100. And the 16-GB iPhone 4 would be priced at $200, while the 32-GB iPhone 4 will cost $300. (All of these prices are with a two-year contract, naturally.)

So given the new options you’ll have in just two weeks, it makes almost no sense to buy the current iPhone 3GS models, even with the new discount prices.

An AT&T spokesman declined to comment on the reasoning behind the price cut. But I think it’s fair to speculate that this is a matter of clearing out old inventory.

In short, we would advise against purchasing the current iPhone 3GS, even if it’s cheaper now, because almost the same phone will be cheaper in a few weeks — and you can get the next-generation model for practically the same price. This seems like a sale to reel in the suckers.

See Also:

• Wal-Mart Cuts 16GB iPhone 3GS to Under $100
• How to Sell Your iPhone on Your iPhone

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Jun 2010 | 1:12 pm

Internet Shows Humans In A New Light

With a quarter of the human race now online, the Internet is bringing out a new spirit of collaboration and co-operation among people across the planet to tackle some of the great challenges we face as a species.This is one of the themes explored in a major new international book, launched today (June 8) by Mr Michael Malone, CEO of Australian internet service provider iiNet., “The Internet: An Introduction to New Media”, by Professor Lelia Green of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI) and Edith Cowan University.“The Internet is demonstrating that people are huge collaborators, not just the competitors we sometimes like to see ourselves as.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Jun 2010 | 1:09 pm

Astro A30 Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker headset coming at ya

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker comes out today in North America, and in 10 days in Europe. (It came out in Japan about two weeks ago.) Famous Japanese video game magazine Famitsu gave it a 40/40, so we can safely assume it’s not bad at all. Also not bad, probably? The Astro A30 gaming headset. Konami helped the Astro team design the headset, dontcha know?

Headsets/headphones are damn near impossible to discuss without actually, you know, using them, so all I know is that A) they reproduce sound and B) if you buy a pair (they retail for $149) they’ll give you a $20 voucher to use to buy the game. That’s not a $20-off coupon, mind you, but the ability to buy the whole game for $20. So that’s neat.

But again, no idea how these sound, but I doubt Konami would slap its name on rubbish.

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Jun 2010 | 1:00 pm

Prices Slashed on Current iPhone, But Don't Buy One

With the iPhone 4 just weeks away from release, Apple and AT&T slashed prices of the current iPhone — but you shouldn't buy one.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Jun 2010 | 1:00 pm

Stroke Recovery Goes 3-D: Canadian Video Game Takes Rehab To The Next Level

An innovative use of virtual reality is emerging as a major technique in brain recovery for stroke patients, Dr. Mindy Levin told the Canadian Stroke Congress today."Our brains have an extraordinary plasticity which can limit the damage caused by some types of stroke," says Dr.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Jun 2010 | 11:58 am

Underwater Plumes of Oil Confirmed

Experts are putting together a three-dimensional view of the oil spill -- and what they're finding is more bad news.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 11:20 am

How to test iOS 4.0 right now

If you’re the excitable type, you may want to try the iOS 4.0 Gold Master right now. This is probably the most dangerous thing you can do to your phone aside from run over it with a car, so don’t say we didn’t warn you. There are many sources, obviously, so do a Google search.

WARNING: If you’re running an unlocked iPhone, turn back now. This is not ready for you. If you’re willing to risk a good bricking or a failure to unlock, then go ahead.

1. First, download the iOS 4.0 GM from your favorite source. It should be called something like iPhone2,1_4.0_8A293_Restore. Don’t double-click it. It should be an ipsw file.

2. Next, find iTunes 9.2 beta from your favorite source. Install it. It is Mac-only right now, but expect a Windows version soon.

3. Prepare to restore to the new firmware.
Mac users: Click on restore while holding down the option key.
PC users: Click on Restore while holding down the shift key.

4. Watch the update and activation for problems. Again, this is a dangerous process fraught with peril. Feel free to try it and you can downgrade back again if you like using these instructions.

Source: MobileCrunch | 8 Jun 2010 | 11:16 am

Calvin Klein Cologne Attracts Wild Cats and Other Animals

Calvin Klein Obsession for Men cologne attracts jaguars and other wild animals.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 10:15 am

Sticky Rice Made Ancient Mortar Stronger

This secret ingredient in ancient Chinese buildings could help with restoration efforts of historic sites.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 10:15 am

Why You Should Avoid Phones With Android Skins

HTC’s Evo might be the last phone running custom software on top of Android that you should even consider buying. Because the whole trend of skinning Android has become a horrible, dividing mess.

The problem with an Android phone running a phone manufacturer’s home-brew software, like HTC’s Sense or Sony’s TimeScape, is well-known: You’re going to wait a lot longer to get the freshest version of Android. That wait wasn’t a big deal in the past. But as of Android 2.2, you should think a bit more deeply about which Android path you’re going to walk down.

The Problem With Custom Skins

They’re awful. HTC’s Sense interface was widely regarded for making Android better when it showed up on the Hero a year ago. Well, Sense is the exception, not the rule. Some truly hideous atrocities have been committed in the name of Android, like Samsung’s Behold II. Not every skin is quite that offensive, but even what I’d consider the average, like Sony’s interface for the Xperia X10, is cloying and confusing; with the Evo, even Sense started to feel a bit tacky. The point should be to make Android sexier and easier to use. They don’t.

Android’s caught up. As of Android 2.2 Froyo, there is basically nothing any of the custom interfaces do that Android doesn’t. A year ago, Android lacked a great many things, from social networking powers to decent Exchange support to remotely accessible settings. HTC’s Sense filled in those massive gaps, once upon a time. But now Android juggles multiple calendars, smoothly integrates Facebook and Twitter into contacts (more seamlessly than any of the custom skins), lets you quickly access settings from the home screen, and even has built-in Wi-Fi hot spot powers. At this point, none of the custom software builds add killer features anymore.

They’re too slow. A corollary of the above point: Not so long ago, Android was behind the best of the custom interfaces. But now, Android is evolving so quickly, it not only caught up, it’s zooming past those meddling with its software. Frankly, the custom interfaces need to innovate faster to make themselves worthwhile — as it is, it seems pretty likely that the next stock version of Android build will be superior to anything phone makers can offer (in fact, I would argue that 2.2 is already). But think about it: How likely is it that hardware companies are going to be able to keep up with Google, who finally seems to have hit its stride with Android?

The reasons to buy an Android phone with customized software have effectively dissolved. They don’t look better; they don’t work better; and they’ll hold you back from getting the latest and greatest updates from Google, possibly by many months. Most people don’t care or even know that their phone really is a computer, meaning it can actually get better via the magic of software updates. But if you’re reading this, you probably care. Android 2.2 is a markedly more excellent experience than 2.1. The best stuff at this point seems like it’ll come from Google, so riding the bleeding edge of Android is the place to be, more now than ever.

Maybe that’ll change in another year, if Google slows down their release cycle as drastically as Android chief Andy Rubin says, to just once or twice a year. Which will be kind of a sad moment when it arrives—the thrill of Android, at least for geeks, is how fast it’s moving. But that’s when it’ll be safe to jump on the slow road. Until then, I’ll be sticking with the official, (probably) annually released Google phones.

Send an e-mail to Matt Buchanan, the author of this post, at matt@gizmodo.com.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Jun 2010 | 10:09 am

It's World Oceans Day: High Time to Save the Seas

On World Oceans Day, a group of scientists is calling for a dramatic increase in the amount of our planet's oceans that are protected from pollution and overfishing.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 9:44 am

Friday News Feedbag for June 4, 2010!

If this is your first exposure to the Friday News Feedbag... we're glad to have you in the club. Welcome to Feedbag Nation, which stems from our weekly science news podcast that you can subscribe to here on iTunes and ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Jun 2010 | 9:27 am

Why the iPhone 4 Camera Is So Promising

When Steve Jobs showed off the new iPhone 4 yesterday, he seemed particularly proud of its camera. And understandably so: take a look at what Apple says are unretouched pictures on its site and you’ll see that this camera can take gorgeous photos.

But how does this new 5 megapixel camera face up to competition from real cameras? After all, camera-phones are almost universally bad thanks to their tiny chips. Jobs said that the jump from 3MP to 5MP wasn’t made by squeezing more pixels onto the same sized chip. Instead, the chip was made bigger. This is good news, as the current iPhone takes a pretty good picture in low light.

Essentially, bigger pixels mean better pictures, as they can gather more light. The new iPhone’s chip has pixels that measure 1.75 µm. Assuming that this means the pixel-pitch, we can compare it to typical sizes for other cameras. The Nikon D3, for example, has an 8.5 µm pixel-pitch, or nearly five times that of the iPhone 4’s pixel-pitch. More typically, a compact camera will have a pixel-pitch of around 2 µm, which puts the iPhone clearly in the range of “real” cameras of the point-and-shoot variety.

The other thing Jobs mentioned was a “backside illuminated sensor.” This isn’t actually illuminated by anything other than the light falling upon it to make the photo, but is is the latest sensor design found in high-end cameras. A backlit sensor has its circuitry on the back of the chip, keeping it out of the way of the light and effectively making the sensor as a whole more sensitive. This gives better low light performance. (For more details, see these press releases from Toshiba and Sony about the two companies’ backside illuminated sensors.)

These figures are probably more important than the obvious measures of megapixels and 720p video-capability. They are also incredibly geeky. That Jobs even mentioned them shows that Apple is taking the camera seriously, something that was almost impossible to believe with the original iPhone’s sucky camera.

And that built-in flash? Well, that will still be a last resort. No matter how fancy your camera, shining a harsh, small light at your subject from right beside the lens will always give a bad result.

iPhone 4 Camera [Apple]

See Also:

• Apple Unveils High-Resolution, Videoconferencing iPhone 4
• Photo Gallery: Hands-On With the iPhone 4
• Will iPhone 4's Audio and Video Chat Finally Break the Voice …
• Breaking: iPhone 3GS Camera Doesn't Suck
• Teardown Reveals iPhone Camera Could Fit the iPod Touch — Barely …
• iPhone Dethrones Rebel XTi as Most Popular Camera on Flickr …

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Jun 2010 | 9:13 am

Bookmate, The Multi-Tasking Book-Holder

Kwon Jieun’s concept Bookmate is a book-cover, a stand, a light and a bookmark, all in one. The flexible jacket has a pair of wraparound grips which grab the two halves of the book when it is open, keeping the book either flat on the table in front of you or – if you flip out the kick-stand – propped up on a counter-top or your lap.

Those rubber hands also contain lamps, illuminating the paper from the side, letting you read in the dark without too much light-spill. Finally, when you are on the move, the jacket will close around the book to protect it and also to keep your place.

In fact, the only thing that it doesn’t seem to do is turn the pages for you. This is a shame, as continually pulling the pages from one side and tucking them into the other could get a mite tedious after a while.

The Bookmate is a rather neat little gizmo, though. I like that all the normally clunky book accessories you might use have been combined into a single streamlined package. Is’s also nice to see that the humble paper book isn’t quite dead yet. At least not to product designers.

Don’t Judge By The Cover [Yanko. Thanks, Radhika!]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:40 am

Apple Leaks iWork for iPhone

Can you spot the difference between the two iPhone shots above? Both come from the “mail” page in Apple’s new iPhone 4 features section. The one on the left was posted yesterday after Steve Jobs’ presentation. The one on the right quickly replaced it when Apple presumably realized it had leaked its own product.

As you can see, the option is given to open a presentation in Keynote, Apple’s PowerPoint-like presentation application. The thing is, right now it doesn’t exist for the iPhone: the iWork suite of which Keynote is a part is only available for the Mac and the iPad. It looks like that may change.

The weirdest part is that the wording of the email in the background remains unchanged, and clearly refers to a presentation, not an EPUB book or PDF, which are the files that can be opened by iBooks.

Why would anybody want Keynote, or even Pages or Numbers (Apple’s word processing and spreadsheet apps) for a cellphone? My guess is that you’ll use them for viewing. With its new high-resolution display, it’s likely that iPhone 4 will also output hi-def video. Thought the iPad made a great, portable machine for hooking up to a projector and making presentations? What about doing that with your phone?

Mobile email like you’ve never seen it before [Apple]

Apple confirms iWork coming to iPhone 4 [Pocket-Lint]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Jun 2010 | 6:05 am

Adobe Lightroom 3 Released, Adds Lens Distortion Tweaks

Adobe has released the final, baked, non-beta version of Lightroom 3, its photo organizing and editing software. Most of you will likely have been using the very stable betas for some months now, but there are a few extra goodies in this final release that will tempt you to upgrade. Well, that and the fact that the beta will expire at the end of this month.

First, a quick summary of the new features we had already seen. The flagship change was in the RAW rendering engine, Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). This is what takes the raw information from the camera’s sensor and turns it into a set of pixels that we recognize an an image. There are many improvements, but the noise-reduction in Lightroom 3 is phenomenal. I use it, and it really is able to knock the color and luminance noise out of even super-high ISO photographs.

The betas also added tethered shooting (grabbing images direct from your camera as you shoot), movie cataloging support (nothing like the fancy movie editing in Apple’s Aperture, but still handy) and “publishing services” which let you push pictures straight to sites like Flickr, or export to a local folder (useful for sending photos to iPhones and iPads, for example).

This latest, final version also adds in lens corrections. This will automatically correct for lens distortion in a bunch of lenses from Sony, Nikon, Canon and others, but you can also tweak your images manually to correct perspective, barrel and pincushion distortion and color distortions. It sounds dull, but it is actually a lot of fun when you abuse it, letting you make your pictures look like they were shot with a fisheye, for example.

Finally, don’t forget to check out the new develop presets. Adobe has added a lot of good ones in addition to the all the old lame ones from Lightrooms one and two.

Lightroom 3 costs $300, or $100 as an upgrade from Lightroom 2. A 30 day trial is available to check it out.

Lightroom 3 trial [Adobe]

Lightroom 3.0 Now Available [Lightroom Journal]

See Also:

• First Look: New Adobe Lightroom Beta Kicks Noise's Butt
• Adobe Adds Speed, Flickr Integration to Lightroom 3
• Lightroom 3 Beta Adds Grain and Light Leaks to Your Photos …

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Jun 2010 | 5:13 am

Spider Holster Adds Arca-Swiss Mount, Third-Party Belt Support

The Spider Holster people have added a boxful of accessories to their belt-mounted camera-carrier, letting photographers hang their cameras on belts from various other manufacturers and generally make their DSLRs more secure.

The Spider Holster, you will remember, is not a way to keep an arachnid close at hand for some comedy mom-scaring action. It is instead a very sturdy metal bracket which which sits at your hip and lets you securely hang your camera, ready for use, via a pin in its tripod socket.

Previously, you could use your regular ol’ belt or the Spider Holster Belt. Now you can buy adapters to use the holster on the Lowepro Street and Field Belt, the ThinkTank Pro-Speed Belt and the ThinkTank Steroid belt. Who knew there were so many nerdy photographers’ belts?

In addition to these adapters, which are mostly $20 and mostly strips of metal which wrap around the belts and screw onto the Spider Holster, there is an Arca-Swiss tripod adapter (made by Arcatech, $40) which screws into the Spider Plate on the bottom of the camera and lets you quickly go from belt to tripod.

Finally there is a wrist-strap D-ring ($6), which screws onto the plate and gives a metal hoop to which you can attach a wrist strap. This is a pretty good idea, as using a regular neck-strap with a camera hanging from your hip is a recipe for amusing trips and tumbles.

If you’re not familiar with this whole Spider business, check out our review. In short: we liked it.

Spider Holster Accessories [Spider Holster. Thanks, Zach!]

See Also:

• Spider Holster, A Belt-Mounted Camera-Hitch
• Hands-On With the SpiderPro Camera Holster
• SpiderPro Camera Holster Is the Belt Peter Parker Would Use …
• Brando's Hip-Mounted Camera Carrier

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Jun 2010 | 4:22 am

Follow your football team in South Africa, wherever you are

Whether you’ll be in South Africa in person this month, or simply cheering your team on from back home, our new tools for football fans can help you soak up the atmosphere and follow your team wherever you are in the world.

You can check out the brand new Street View imagery for South Africa which includes amazing pictures from seven of South Africa’s new football stadiums, including Soccer City in Johannesburg, Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane and Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. Each one can be explored from pitch-level in 360 degrees, both inside and out—see a preview on the Lat Long blog. These detailed images were collected over the last few months, using the Street View Trike and some serious pedal power!



You can also zoom around the host cities and stadiums in 3D. Simply turn on the 3D buildings layer in Google Earth or switch to Earth View in Google Maps, and zoom in to the chosen destination. All 10 of the football stadiums have been modelled in amazing 3D detail, as well as the South African cities of Rustenburg, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.

To make it easier for people to find all these great places, South African Tourism have provided information on the most important sights. Visit maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica to start virtually exploring South Africa.

If you’re staying back home but want to find a great place to watch the match with your friends, take a look on Google Maps and look for the special football icon—that tells you that the location is one of tens of thousands of businesses who have added themselves to Google Places as a football viewing location.

Our first global Doodle 4 Google competition is well underway, with tens of thousands of children in 17 countries around the world sending us their amazing designs for a doodle around the theme of “I Love Football.” The winning doodle will be displayed internationally on the Google homepage for a day on July 11, 2010.

To make it easy for you to customize your photos to show the world which team you’re cheering for, we’ve launched a set of football-themed photo effects in Picnik. With just a few clicks, you can add digital face paint, soccer-themed stickers and team flag overlays, customized for each of the 32 qualifying teams.

Finally, it’s not just the professional players who’ve been put through their paces ahead of kick-off. In the run-up to the games, fans from around the the world have joined the legendary Dutch midfielder Edgar Davids on his Street Soccer Tour for Charity from Amsterdam, London and Paris and to eight cities in Senegal, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Edgar and his team of Street Soccer Legends have been competing against local players as they make their journey to South Africa and you can watch them on YouTube.

May the best team win!

Update 12:09PM: Updated link to Picnik photo effects.

Posted by Yonca Brunini, Marketing Director, Southern and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa (SEEMEA)

Source: The Official Google Blog | 8 Jun 2010 | 3:00 am

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