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Video Featuring An iPad, iPhone, Facebook And Twitter. Also, A Wedding.We’ve seen a marriage proposal on an iPad (again, congratulations Zach, you dork) but what we hadn’t seen yet – although I’m pretty sure this isn’t a first – is an actual wedding ceremony riddled with iPads, iPhones, status updating on Facebook and Twitter and whatnot. My wife would have called everything off if I would have even suggested such a thing, but hey, whatever floats your boat. Congratulations to both of them. Live long and prosper. After some hardcore investigative journalism, I found the Apple fanboi officiant on Twitter and TwitPic, and also discovered the Twitter account of the guy that got married – according to his bio, he works at Apple, which explains a lot. Here’s the tweet that was sent during the ceremony and here’s the picture he took to go along with it (both embedded below for good measure). The funniest thing however, was the fact that I found the beautiful bride’s Twitter account too. Her first and only tweet was: “wondering what the hell this is”. Don’t we all, Amber, don’t we all. (Thanks for the heads up, Edible Apple)
Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 10 Jun 2010 | 4:10 am South Korea Rocket Crashes in Second Straight Failure - ABC News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 10 Jun 2010 | 4:07 am First sales survey indicates iPad is big hit in Japan
The firm, which collected POS data from 2,364 Japanese electronics retailers, says Apple’s share in that segment stood at just 3.5% in April. But the iPad (launched in Japan on May 28), helped Apple to eclipse Sony, which – at 9.3% – fell down to No. 5 in the notebook sales ranking (at least for the time being). Toshiba (22.1%), Fujitsu (17.4%), and NEC (16%) are still leading, but according to BCN, all have been losing market share to big A last month. This isn’t that surprising (Apple surely profits from the “sexy new product” effect) and BCN hasn’t released absolute numbers (neither did Apple itself), but it looks like the iPad is a winner in Japan, too. Another interesting tidbit of information: BCN also said the iPad is selling about three times faster than the iPhone did in the first ten days after the products lauched on the Japanese market. Via Kyodo
Source: CrunchGear | 10 Jun 2010 | 4:06 am Internet memorial site launched in Hong Kong (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 10 Jun 2010 | 3:51 am Calif. mother finds abducted daughter on Facebook (AP)AP - Prince Sagala desperately searched for her son and daughter for 15 years, fearing she had lost them forever to the estranged husband who took them to his native Mexico.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 10 Jun 2010 | 3:46 am Google Remove Background Image Bug frustrates International Users - I4U
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 10 Jun 2010 | 3:32 am 'Oldest leather shoe' discovered - BBC News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 10 Jun 2010 | 3:31 am Transact Network is a "First" for Visa EuropeGIBRALTAR, June 10, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Transact Network, the European BIN sponsorship and prepaid services provider, today announced that it is the first Gibraltar prepaid card issuer to become a Principal Member of Visa Europe.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 10 Jun 2010 | 3:21 am The State Department's Worst Nightmare [Voices]By Philip Shenon, Writer, Daily Beast The State Department and American embassies around the world are bracing for what officials fear could be the massive, unauthorized release of secret diplomatic cables in which U.S. diplomats harshly evaluate foreign leaders and reveal the inner-workings of American foreign policy. Diplomatic and law-enforcement officials tell The Daily Beast their alarm stems from the arrest of a 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst based in Iraq who has reportedly admitted that he downloaded 260,000 diplomatic cables from government computer networks and was prepared to make them public. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 10 Jun 2010 | 3:15 am Dutch squad banned from Twitter after Elia howler (Reuters)Reuters - The Netherlands World Cup squad has been banned from using Twitter during the tournament after Eljero Elia sparked a racism row with comments on a live streaming video.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 10 Jun 2010 | 3:11 am Digital Book Piracy: The Walls We Build Up [Voices]By Brian F. O’Leary, Magellan Media Dear Mr. Turow, Congratulations and best wishes on your election as president of the Authors Guild. This is an interesting and in some ways challenging time for publishing, and the AG is positioned to serve as a well-reasoned and informed voice for authors. As it happens, the need for reason and data at a time of uncertainty prompts me to write. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 10 Jun 2010 | 3:04 am Copyright: The Elephant in the Middle of the Glee Club [Voices]By Christina Mulligan, Contributor, Information Society Project, Yale Law School This Tuesday, millions of eyes will be glued to the season finale of Glee — a popular musical comedy airing on Fox. Excitement is building among the show’s viewership, but my own enthusiasm for Glee has recently given way to confusion over its message. The fictional high school chorus at the center of the show has a huge problem, you see — nearly a million dollars in potential legal liability. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 10 Jun 2010 | 2:48 am AT&T Learns Exactly The Wrong Thing About Data Usage [Voices]By Christopher Schanck, Blogger, Design By Gravity AT&T (T) says that 65% of its users use less 200 megabytes per month; a whopping 98% use less than 2 gigabytes. AT&T looked at these numbers and concluded it was time for tiered pricing; time to soak these “data pigs”. I am a data pig. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 10 Jun 2010 | 2:32 am Spotify Launches On TVs In Sweden and Finland
Is Spotify's future in devices and services? Like "Intel inside", it's beginning to feel like Spotify - the hot streaming music service in Europe which is said to be prepping a US launch - may have a better future dealing with service providers and device manufacturers than trying to go direct to consumers.
That at least is the impression as today it launched its streaming music service on TVs across Sweden and Finland as of today, partnering with a Nordic telecommunications giant to do it.
TeliaSonera's 120,000 digital TV customers will now get instant, remote control access to Spotify, so long as they are existing Spotify Premium subscribers.
Source: TechCrunch | 10 Jun 2010 | 2:23 am Who Killed the Iceman? [Voices]By John Pickrell, Contributor, Cosmos It sounds like the opening to a television forensics drama. On a sunny September day in 1991, a German couple hiking through the Alps make a gruesome discovery. Initially, the corpse partially jutting out of the melting ice is thought to be from a recent mountaineering accident. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 10 Jun 2010 | 2:22 am Science fiction short-film contestAspiring sf film makers, take note: "From June 4 through September 15, 2010, the Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival will accept short film submissions, up to 15 minutes in length, that have...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 2:17 am Science fiction short-film contest
Aspiring sf film makers, take note: "From June 4 through September 15, 2010, the Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival will accept short film submissions, up to 15 minutes in length, that have been produced after 2006 for entry into the competition. Multiple submissions will be accepted according to the rules and regulations. Submissions will be judged based on originality, quality, artistic merit, innovation, voice, style and narrative.
The festival will accept animated or live-action submissions in science fiction (examples: futuristic stories, space adventure, technological speculation, social experiments, utopia and dystopia) and fantasy (examples: sword and sorcery, folklore, urban fantasy, magic, mythic adventure). The festival welcomes submissions that step outside the boundaries of reality and inspire a sense of wonder. The festival will not accept horror submissions. Submissions are accepted through Withoutabox."
Science Fiction + Fantasy Short Film Festival
(Thanks, Emily!)
What Has Kai-fu Lee Done Since October?
Now, the offices are teeming with more than 100 people, most of whom are clustered in a nine very early-stage startups. Most of them are targeting mobile, but everything else Lee told me was off the record. (Sorry.) Suffice to say, the incubator is bursting at the seams and Lee doesn’t seem content. Expect more news soon. Lee is well known in China—see if you can spot his book on sale above in a train station of a second tier city. But there’s some healthy skepticism about how Innovation Works will do. There’s the critique that Lee knows multinationals more than he knows startups, and the critique that he gets too much press in the West. (Yes, I know I’m adding to that here.) There’s also the critique that with so much money and entrepreneurship in China now–especially in Beijing–there’s not a huge need for an incubator. I shot a quick video with Lee and asked him some of those questions. There’s a cool small-world moment at the end (which is hard to hear over my spazzy laughter) when I randomly meet one of Lee’s crew who says he met his partner at the Beijing TechCrunch meet up we did about a year ago. We’ll just take our stock whenever it’s convenient. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 10 Jun 2010 | 2:08 am Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley Talks to Mashable [VIDEO]During an on-stage interview at Tuesdays Mashable Media Summit, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley revealed the new concept of badge rewards, his companys latest growth milestones, and the social networks...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 2:08 am Unisys Wins Renewal of Outsourcing Contract with The Co-operative BankLONDON, June 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Unisys Payment Services Limited, has won a five-year extension of its cheque processing contract with The Co-operative Bank.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 10 Jun 2010 | 2:00 am The Risks of Parenting While Plugged InA insightful piece in The New York Times that all parents should read. On how technology distracts us from our children. ..."It sort of comes back to quality time, and distracted time is not high-quality...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:55 am Ham radio and maker cultureIn this editorial (PDF), CQ Amateur Radio editor Rich Moseson makes the connection between maker culture and ham radio traditions: "The spirit of figuring out how it works and making it work better (or do something completely different) is so ingrained in our culture that it has even become part of the FCC rules that govern our operation [§97.1(b) Continuation and extension of the amateur's proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art.]. Experimentation is not only permitted, it is encouraged. Hams are the only FCC licensees who, as a group, are permitted to build and modify their own gear and who are generally exempted from FCC equipment certification requirements." (Thanks, Chris!) Source: Boing Boing | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:49 am Ham radio and maker cultureIn this editorial (PDF), CQ Amateur Radio editor Rich Moseson makes the connection between maker culture and ham radio traditions: "The spirit of figuring out how it works and making it work better (or...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:49 am The Secret Weapons in Nigers Fight Against Hunger: Photo IDs & Mobile PhonesAn interesting article by Amanda McClelland, Emergency Nutrition and Food Security Manager, Concern Worldwide, Niger, published in MobileActive.org ... Delivering aid in Niger is anything but easy...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:45 am SF in SF reading series, Deborah Grabien & Seanan McGuireSan Franciscans, behold: the latest installment in the SF in SF reading series is upon you: Deborah Grabien & Seanan McGuire, Saturday June 12th, Variety Preview Room Theatre, the Hobart Bldg, 1st floor (entrance between Quiznos & Citibank), 582 Market St. @ 2nd & Montgomery, San Francisco. Doors and cash bar open at 6:00PM. Readings begin at 7:00PM. Readings are followed by Q&A moderated by Terry Bisson.Source: Boing Boing | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:42 am UPDATE 1-Pitney Bowes to buy Portrait Software for 44 mln stgJune 10 (Reuters) - Pitney Bowes Inc , a U.S.-based provider of mail processing equipments, on Thursday said it agreed to buy British software development firm Portrait Software Plc for 44.4 million pounds...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:42 am SF in SF reading series, Deborah Grabien & Seanan McGuireSan Franciscans, behold: the latest installment in the SF in SF reading series is upon you: Deborah Grabien & Seanan McGuire, Saturday June 12th, Variety Preview Room Theatre, the Hobart Bldg, 1st...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:42 am PRESS DIGEST - Russia - June 10MOSCOW, June 10 (Reuters) - The following are some of the leading stories in Russia's newspapers on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:40 am Paper and envelopes that look like icons This "Icon Letter: Icon Paper + Icon Envelope" from Brigada Creativa is just a concept, alas, but it's a nice one! Icon Letter: Icon Paper + Icon Envelope (via Asobi) Source: Boing Boing | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:37 am Paper and envelopes that look like iconsThis "Icon Letter: Icon Paper + Icon Envelope" from Brigada Creativa is just a concept, alas, but it's a nice one! Icon Letter: Icon Paper + Icon Envelope (via Asobi) Horrifying stationery Artist chases...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:37 am Augmented Reality: How Mobile Is Changing HumanityDesign Observer has published a fascinating two part essay on augmented reality, the warping of space and time, and how mobile is changing humanity. The contemporary convergence of mobile phone, camera,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:37 am "Real" keyboard, guitars debut in Rock Band 3 - GameSpot
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:34 am Locals and Tourists maps show where visitors and locals take pics in major citiesEric Fischer's "Locals and Tourists" Flickr set uses geotags to compare photos taken by locals (people whose photos come from the same city, over long terms) and tourists (people whose photos come from...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:34 am Locals and Tourists maps show where visitors and locals take pics in major cities Eric Fischer's "Locals and Tourists" Flickr set uses geotags to compare photos taken by locals (people whose photos come from the same city, over long terms) and tourists (people whose photos come from a city for less than a month, and who have some other city they usually post from) and produces colored maps showing the difference. Readers use Flickr's annotator to add explanatory notes. Here's London. Locals and Tourists (via Kottke) Source: Boing Boing | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:34 am WRAPUP 1-Brazil Senate passes key points of Lula oil reform* Senate passes bill creating production-sharing contractsSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:24 am Doctors urged to warn against cellphone use in carsPhysicians should tell patients not to send text messages or use cellphones while driving, just as they advise them against smoking or to use seat belts, a doctor said in the influential New England Journal...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:22 am UPDATE 1-Hargreaves Services terminates talks with UK Coal* UK Coal reiterates FY '10 production view of 7.6 mln tonnesSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:17 am UPDATE 1-Nice Systems to buy eglue for $29 mln in cash* Acquisition to be accretive to non-GAAP EPS in Q1, 2011Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:15 am Life Healthcare flat in debut after $687 mln IPOJOHANNESBURG, June 10 (Reuters) - South African private healthcare group Life Healthcare was flat in its stock market debut on Thursday, after raising $687 million in an IPO that was sapped by a weak...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:10 am NICE to Acquire eglue, a Leading Provider of Real-Time Decisioning and Agent Guidance SolutionsRA'ANANA, Israel, June 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NICE Systems (Nasdaq: NICE) a leading global provider of intent-based solutions that enable enterprises and security organizations to extract Insight from Interactions, transactions and surveillance to drive business performance, reduce risk and ensure safety, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire eglue, a leading provider of real-time decisioning and guidance solutions.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:07 am Marketers Face Zooming Costs as ESPN Launches 3-D Channel [Voices]By Suzanne Vranica, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal Walt Disney Co.’s (DIS) ESPN network has convinced three major advertisers to produce expensive 3-D commercials for its new sports channel debuting Friday with the 2010 World Cup broadcast. It is the first major test of marketers’ appetite for 3-D pitches. Procter & Gamble Co. (PG), Sony Corp. (SNE) and Disney’s Pixar will all experiment with spots on the new 3-D sports channel. ESPN has previously aired several 3-D telecasts, including the Masters Tournament. Trying to convince the ad industry to embrace the in-your-face technology is tough. Ad executives say 3-D ads are costly and represent a time-consuming effort since there are so few production firms skilled enough to create these types of spots. Prices to create regular, 30-second ads, for major marketers, can cost between $500,000 to $1 million and 3-D commercials can increase the price by 30 to 40 percent, say ad executives. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:00 am Daily Crunch: Anatomy Lesson Edition
Excellent: Mac Classic converted to iPad stand
Source: CrunchGear | 10 Jun 2010 | 1:00 am Come On Yelp, Really? Dukes, Barons, And Kings Of Venues?
The latest update to their iPhone app (4.2.1) includes a feature called Yelp Royalty. It rewards users with the most check-ins at a venue the title of “Duke” or “Duchess.” Those with the most titles in their neighborhood become the “Baron.” Those with the most int he city become the “King.” Sound familiar? Maybe you’ve heard of Foursquare. Sure, Foursquare is a little different in that it allows you to become the “Mayor” of a venues, but come on. And the fact that mayor icons (inexplicably) include King crowns just add to this. You may recall that back in January, Yelp added the ability to check-in to venues from their iPhone app. Again, yes, this was copying an idea laid out by a bunch of services before it (Foursquare being the most visible), but it seemed like fair game. It was simply taking a good idea, and laying it over Yelp’s substantial service. Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley didn’t like the idea too much at the time, but noted that Yelp “copied the wrong stuff.” Maybe this time, they copied the right stuff. Can’t wait for Crowley’s post reacting to this one.      
Source: TechCrunch | 10 Jun 2010 | 12:51 am UPDATE 1-TSMC May sales hit record; demand to stay strong* May unconsolidated sales T$33.84 bln vs T$24.47 bln yr ago (Adds details)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 12:38 am Apple faces US antitrust scrutiny -FT - Reuters
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 10 Jun 2010 | 12:34 am Apple faces U.S. antitrust scrutiny -FTJune 10 (Reuters) - U.S. antitrust regulators plan to investigate whether Apple is unfairly restricting rivals such as Google from carrying ads on the iPhone, iPad and iPod, the Financial Times said...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 12:30 am REFILE-Brazil Senate passes oil-for-Petrobras stock swapBRASILIA, Brazil, June 10 (Reuters) - Brazil's Senate passed on Thursday a government plan to transfer up to 5 billion barrels of deepwater oil reserves to state energy company Petrobras, paving the way...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 12:27 am Sony To Launch First 3D PS3 Games On FridayStoobalou writes "Sony plans to show off the first 3D PlayStation 3 games in the UK on 10 June, with a retail launch on 11 June. If you were wondering why Sony is shutting down half the PSN today for maintenance, then wonder no more. We reckon the company's simply gearing up for the launch of the PlayStation 3's first stereoscopic 3D games. Unfortunately, many game developers are seemingly indifferent to the 3D revolution at the moment. In fact, EA CEO John Riccitiello reckons that it's going to be a good three years before 3D becomes a standard gaming feature. Riccitiello explained that there's a big difference between converting a game to run in 3D mode and properly developing it to take full advantage of the extra dimension."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 10 Jun 2010 | 12:17 am Romania - Factors to Watch on June 10BUCHAREST, June 10 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Romanian financial markets on Thursday.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 10 Jun 2010 | 12:11 am Who Needs a Widget? Philips Lets You Stream Any Content from Laptop to TV (PC World)PC World - Philips Wednesday showed off a wireless technology which allows you to stream any content you can see on your laptop screen to a compatible Philips TV. Instead being limited to whatever Internet services are installed on your Internet-connected TV, Philips Wireless Media Connect lets you send any local or Internet content from your laptop wirelessly to its new 7700 Series LED Eco TV or to its BDP7320 Blu-ray player.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 11:59 pm Videogame adaptation "Kane" eyes new director (Reuters)Reuters - F. Gary Gray is in talks to direct "Kane and Lynch," a video game adaptation starring Bruce Willis and Jamie Foxx.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 11:07 pm PTA joins with Facebook to promote Internet safety (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:51 pm Google Slams Apple Over iPhone Ad Bancrimeandpunishment writes "This real-life clash of the titans could be much more interesting than the movie. Today Google fired the latest volley in its war of words with Apple over mobile advertising. In a blog posting, the head of Google's mobile ad service, Admob, had harsh words for Apple's new restrictions concerning the iPhone and iPad ... calling them a threat to competition. There's a lot of money at stake ... the US mobile ad market, which is about $600 million, is expected to more than double by 2013."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:36 pm Google Adds A Background Image To Its Homepage By Default (At Least For 24 Hours)
It’s worth pointing out that there’s a possibility the current featured image seen above is depicting the BP oil spill tragedy (which The Next Web is claiming). But Google’s blog post doesn’t say anything about it. We’re guessing that it isn’t a photo of the oil spill, and will update once we’ve confirmed. Update: Looks like TNW pulled their post. Update 2: Nope, we’ve confirmed with Google that it definitely is not related to the oil spill. Google’s Marissa Mayer writes in a blog post:
     
Source: TechCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:34 pm The art of a homepageLast week, we announced a new feature that lets you add a favorite photo or image to the background of your Google.com homepage.To provide you with an extra bit of inspiration, we‘ve collaborated with several well-known artists, sculptors and photographers to create a gallery of background images you can use to personalize your Google homepage. Included in the collection are photographs of the works of Dale Chihuly, Jeff Koons, Tom Otterness, Polly Apfelbaum, Kengo Kuma (隈研吾), Kwon, Ki-soo (권기수) and Tord Boontje, as well as some incredible photos from Yann Arthus-Bertrand and National Geographic. We’ll be featuring these images as backgrounds on the Google homepage over the next 24 hours. Of course, since we want your Google homepage to be personal to you, you can still choose an image or photo from your computer or your own Picasa Web Album. Whether you select an image from our new artist collection or prefer to have a more personal touch on your homepage, you’ll still enjoy the speed and ease of use that you’ve come to expect from Google.  Niijima Floats, Dale Chihuly  Yann Arthus-Bertrand, GoodPlanet Foundation We’re also excited to announce that this feature is now available internationally. We hope you enjoy the new artist collection and making Google feel more like your own! Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience    
 Source: The Official Google Blog | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:07 pm Android App Video Review: Gist (Appolicious)Appolicious - Why settle with email and social network updates separately when you can see them all in one place and your Android phone? Track clients and contacts easily by adding them to your Gist list. Receive updates, custom searches, and more all prioritized by who is more important to you.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:04 pm AT&T Discloses Breach of iPad Owner Data - Wall Street Journal
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:02 pm Saving Face: Bluetooth Headsets Skew More to Cool Than ToolWired tries out four headsets, finding some still a little too geeky and others much too inept. But the Aliph Jawbone Icon was overall just about right.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:00 pm Ask a Recommendation Engine: Computer-Generated AdviceSearching for a movie worthy of your iPad? Wondering if you should use that Taylor Swift ringtone? Wired's AI Recommendation Engine spits out the logical solutions to these and other quandaries.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:00 pm June 10, 1952: Marketing Mylar With a Film About a FilmEven miracle materials need marketing, so DuPont whipped up this marvelous movie to make men pay attention. It's half science and half Hefner.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:00 pm Saving Face: Bluetooth Headsets Skew More to Cool Than ToolWired tries out four headsets, finding some still a little too geeky and others much too inept. But the Aliph Jawbone Icon was overall just about right.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:00 pm What’s Missing From iPhone 4 Is Part Of What Makes It Great
During his keynote address on Monday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted that while Apple may not be the first to release features, they do so in a way that’s the best implementation. Many people view this as absolute bullshit. But what that implies is that they think Apple simply cannot get features done in time — or that they will not do them for some reason. I have a hard time believing either of those is the case. Jobs cited the iPhone’s cut, copy, & paste functionality as one example of Apple getting a feature right. I have to agree. For two years, everyone complained (myself included) that Apple didn’t have this functionality. Could Apple have done it sooner? Of course. But would it have been half-baked? Probably. Just look at how it works on other devices — or maybe I should say: look at how poorly it works on other devices compared to the iPhone. Most Android phones want you to use that damn ball to select text. Or worse, those arrow buttons at the bottom of the EVO’s horrid keyboard. It’s a nightmare. Another popular example is background tasks (or multitasking). This feature is finally coming to the new iOS 4 after being on other devices for a few years. So was Apple dragging its feet out of incompetence? Or were they being stubborn? In their view, they were waiting to perfect the system that would not destroy battery life. Android’s background method is supposedly similar to what Apple will use, but it has issues (see: the EVO). Most people haven’t yet seen third-party apps running in the background with iOS, so it’s hard to know exactly how well Apple has done here. (And I only got to play around with one app, Pandora, running in the background for a few minutes.) But a few developers I’ve talked to who have used the system say it’s by far the best combination of functionality and battery-saving techniques that they’ve seen. One told me that it basically doesn’t ding battery life at all. In March of last year, I reported that I had heard from sources that Apple was talking about ways to bring background tasks to the iPhone. Even though it didn’t happen until now, by multiple accounts, Apple was working on it at the time. It’s just that it took Apple this long to perfect the system. Most companies, seeing their competitors already doing something, would feel forced into releasing their own solution as quickly as possible. Not Apple. And I suspect this ends up being a big benefit for the users. But those are things that currently now work on the iPhone or will soon be working. What about newer features that Apple left out of iPhone 4 (and iOS 4)? Here’s a list of 10 things from eWeek. Some are ridiculous (for the millionth time: Apple is not going to do a physical keyboard — nor should they), and some are just clearly (and sadly) not going to happen (Google Voice). But a few are things that come up somewhat regularly.
One is 4G support. The main problem here is that the iPhone is still exclusively tied to AT&T in the U.S., and AT&T has basically no 4G support yet (they have enough problems with their 3G support). If Apple made a version of the iPhone that worked on Sprint’s network (which recently rolled out the EVO 4G), then maybe we could talk — but they don’t. More importantly, I’m not even sure we’ll see a 4G-capable iPhone next year. As Apple proved with the first iPhone (which wasn’t 3G despite 3G being fairly ubiquitous at the time), they care more about the overall experience than about being the first to have a nice-sounding feature. Users laughed at the notion that 3G capabilities severely dinged battery life — until the iPhone 3G came out and that’s exactly what happened. With 4G, by all accounts, the battery ding is even worse. Also, 4G is still slowly deploying around the country, and some carriers (read: AT&T) won’t have it really deployed for a long, long time. In other words, don’t be surprised if next year Apple still doesn’t have a 4G version of the device. Everyone will bitch about it, but in Apple’s view, it likely just won’t be worth it yet. Another feature brought up is over-the-air (OTA) updates. While eWeek seems to specifically be talking about OTA firmware updates (does anyone really care about that so much?), the more pressing issue is the ability to sync things wirelessly on your iPhone. Currently, you can only truly do that with certain MobileMe elements (like Calendar, Contacts, etc). But in his post a couple days ago, my colleague Jason Kincaid brought up his disappointment that over-the-air syncing of things like apps and music wasn’t in iOS yet. This is a fair point both because it would be very useful, and because it’s baked into the latest version of Android, 2.2. But we have yet to see exactly how well this system with work with Android 2.2. The on-stage demos at Google I/O were impressive, but it probably wouldn’t have been made into a demo if it weren’t. The proof will be in the real-world usage of this feature. Apple is clearly thinking about how best to do this as well. Jobs said as much during the D Conference a few weeks ago, and Apple has even blocked applications that do something similar (a sign that they’re likely working on it — and that they don’t want third parties touching the iTunes/iPhone sync interaction). Make no mistake: this feature will be coming to the iPhone. And I would bet it will be here next year. And if Apple is able to get its iTunes-in-the-cloud service off the ground in time, it could be a lot easier than people are thinking right now. The point to all of this is that one of the things that makes the iPhone great is that Apple is so deliberate and meticulous in the features they choose to focus on and implement. Could Apple include more features? Of course. But anytime you try to do more, you take focus away from the key things you want to get done. It’s something that’s so obvious it almost needs to be restated. It’s the same reason why startups that focus on creating as many features as possible often fare worse than those that focus on a few key ideas. The ones that keep it simple are able to execute much better. Apple (which likes to think of itself as the “world’s biggest startup”) is no different, and the iPhone is a testament to that. The conspiracy theorists will say that Apple holds back features to be able to sell more devices the next time around. I believe it’s much less about that, and more about focusing on a core group of features that matter the most — and nailing them. Judging by both sales figures and customer satisfaction reports, the strategy is working. And the iPhone 4 — even without 4G, OTA updates, a physical keyboard, etc, etc, etc — will prove that once again.      
Source: TechCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:45 pm It’s real: iPad Arcade…well at least its not fake
Using Arduino circuitry, the iPad Arcade is a fully functioning mod. It controls the iPad just as if you were playing a real arcade game. Yeah, it’s not as flashy as ThinkGeek’s version, but remember, they didn’t actually have to make it. iPad accessory makers need to start thinking up cool ideas like this. They’d be entering a empty market with plenty of customers (hint hint Guitar Hero). [via Gizmodo]
Source: CrunchGear | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:30 pm AT&T is offering the Palm Pixi Plus for freeSection: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
Product [AT&T] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:22 pm AT&T security breach leaks thousands of iPad owners’ emails (but luckily, little else)
The hackers, a group known as Goatse Security (I’ll let you work out the reasoning for the name yourself), organized a brute-force attack in which they pummeled a public AT&T script with semirandom ICC-ID numbers, which would return nothing if invalid but an email address if valid. A few hours later, they had the ICC-IDs and email addresses of everyone from Michael Bloomberg and Diane Sawyer to a Mr. Eldredge, who commands a fleet of B-1 bombers.
Source: MobileCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:19 pm All T-Mo phones free on June 19? What is this sorcery?
According to TMoNews, apparently all phones purchased under the family plan will not actually be purchased – they’ll be free. TMN doesn’t have much info – just a vague commercial showing a family wandering into a store and hearing that everything is free – but it seems like an interesting development if you’re looking into a Garminphone or a Cliq.
Source: MobileCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:06 pm AT&T Security Breach Exposes Thousands Of iPad Owners’ Emails (But Luckily, Little Else)
The hackers, a group known as Goatse Security (I’ll let you work out the reasoning for the name yourself), organized a brute-force attack in which they pummeled a public AT&T script with semirandom ICC-ID numbers, which would return nothing if invalid but an email address if valid. A few hours later, they had the ICC-IDs and email addresses of everyone from Michael Bloomberg and Diane Sawyer to a Mr. Eldredge, who commands a fleet of B-1 bombers.      
Source: TechCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:00 pm Targeted Molecules Play Only Minor Role In Axon RepairDiscovery underscores difficulties in developing regenerative spinal cord injury therapiesNeuroscientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that removing three key inhibitory molecules from myelin – the insulating material that surrounds nerve cell fibers – does not significantly boost the ability of injured spinal axons to regenerate and restore themselves to full function."I think this just shows how incredibly complicated the challenge is to induce axon regeneration and functional recovery after central nervous system (CNS) injuries," said Binhai Zheng, PhD, assistant professor of neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and principal investigator of the study.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:43 pm Individual Brain Cells Can ID Both Cars And CatsCertain 'multitasking' neurons are best at making correct IDs in multiple categoriesResearchers at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory found that single brain cells, if confronted with a difficult task, can identify objects as dissimilar as sports cars and dogs.Researchers have never been sure exactly how specialized cells in the brain can be.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:41 pm AT&T security breach leaks thousands of iPad owners’ emails (but luckily, little else)
The hackers, a group known as Goatse Security (I’ll let you work out the reasoning for the name yourself), organized a brute-force attack in which they pummeled a public AT&T script with semirandom ICC-ID numbers, which would return nothing if invalid but an email address if valid. A few hours later, they had the ICC-IDs and email addresses of everyone from Michael Bloomberg and Diane Sawyer to a Mr. Eldredge, who commands a fleet of B-1 bombers. As is occasionally the case with grey-hat hacker actions like this, the hack seems to have been executed first and AT&T notified shortly afterward — though not before an unknown number of third parties had access to the script. AT&T closed the hole immediately (it was as simple as turning off the script), and apologized as follows:
Impacted. Like wisdom teeth. Why not “affected?” Anyway, I notice they say they were not contacted by the group but by some business customer. The timing isn’t clear from the Gawker article, but I wonder if there’s a little more to this than anyone cares to admit. Groups like Goatse often warn their targets beforehand, but it seems like one or the other would have mentioned that if it happened. You’d think a company as exposed as AT&T would have bells on its scripts that would ring if suddenly requests increased by 1000%, but practices like that are perhaps too much to be expected.
As AT&T mentioned, the only information the breach could provide was an email address. Some of the high-level ones (CEOs and such) noted as leaked were likely already public, like all of ours here. But let’s not forget that of the 114,000, 113,950 weren’t high-level media executives. A vast list of early-adopting, 3G-using, iPad owners is be a valuable thing (to say nothing of a guy with a bunch of bombers), and I have no doubt that someone more unscrupulous than Goatse Security will be passing that list on to interested buyers. Nothing else, though, if we are to believe those in the know — and they have no reason to deceive us in this case. What will the outcome be? A bit of extra spam for those involved is likely the worst that will happen. The ICC-ID isn’t used in any secure access protocols. And who’s to blame? AT&T, AT&T, and AT&T. It’s arguable that Apple (who gets it in Gawker’s headline) should have something in place to prevent something akin to a unique device ID from being used as authorization, but that’s stretching it. The script, which accepted any properly-formed input and spat out private information, was the issue from start to finish and it is AT&T who created and served that script. Apple isn’t safe from the fallout, though: many who hear of this in the papers tomorrow will choose not to separate the device maker from the service provider. The worst part is there’s not much they can do but say hey, we’re committed to security and point their finger at AT&T. What can you do? If you are an iPad 3G customer, call customer service and demand reasonable satisfaction. A few months of free unlimited 3G would probably go over nicely, don’t you think? And, of course, there is their always-personable CEO as well. I’m sure he’d like to hear from you (limit one email per customer, please). The rest of the story (and continuing updates) can be found at Gawker.
Source: CrunchGear | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:41 pm MIT Researchers Find 2 Brain Circuits Involved With Habitual LearningPatterns of activity in circuits evolve as our behaviors become more habitualDriving to and from work is a habit for most commuters – we do it without really thinking. But before our commutes became routine, we had to learn our way through trial-and-error exploration.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:40 pm A Cooler Pacific May Have Severely Affected Medieval Europe, North AmericaCombination of hi-tech models and paleo-records may hold key to unlocking reason for Anastazi people's migration and other global eventsIn the time before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, a cooler central Pacific Ocean has been connected with drought conditions in Europe and North America that may be responsible for famines and the disappearance of cliff dwelling people in the American West.A new study from the University of Miami (UM) has found a connection between La Niña-like sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific and droughts in western Europe and in what later became the southwestern United States and Mexico, as published in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters."We've known for some time the connection between El Niño and La Niña and the weather conditions in North America and Europe," said Robert Burgman, a climate scientist at UM's Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:36 pm Compound Enhances Cancer-Killing Properties Of Agent In TrialsAdding a second agent may make a new, experimental anti-cancer drug effective against a wide range of cancers, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have found.A man-made compound called ARC was shown by UIC researchers in 2006 to cause tumor cells to die while leaving normal cells unharmed.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:34 pm Earning free tunes with Pepsi Loot is easier said than done (Appolicious)Appolicious - There are Coke lovers and there are Pepsi lovers, and if you fall into the latter category, you can now use your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad to earn credits toward free music by checking in to Pepsi-serving restaurants with the new app Pepsi Loot.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:33 pm Greener Horizons: Plastics May Grow On TreesMoney may not grow on trees, but gasoline, computers, and tennis shoes just might thanks to new biotech advances that could allow manufacturers to produce fuel, plastics, and other chemicals from plants instead of petroleum.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:25 pm New Software To Measure Emotional Reactions To WebUniversity of Montreal's Aude Dufresne led team that designed technology used by BellWhile most people have intuitive reactions to Web sites, a group of Canadian scientists is developing software that can actually measure those emotions and more.Aude Dufresne, a professor at the University of Montreal Department Of Communications, led a team of researchers that are designing a new software to evaluate the biological responses of Internet users.Simply put, the new software measures everything in Web users from body heat to eye movements to facial expressions and analyzes how they relate to online activities.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:20 pm Personality Predicts Political PreferencesValues deeply embedded in biologyThere is a strong relationship between a voter's politics and his personality, according to new research from the University of Toronto.Researchers at UofT have shown that the psychological concern for compassion and equality is associated with a liberal mindset, while the concern for order and respect of social norms is associated with a conservative mindset."Conservatives tend to be higher in a personality trait called orderliness and lower in openness.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:19 pm New Type Of Human Stem Cell May Be More Easy To ManipulateChanging growth factors produces cells that should be more useful for research, future therapiesResearchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Regenerative Medicine (MGH-CRM) and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute have a developed a new type of human pluripotent stem cell that can be manipulated more readily than currently available stem cells.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:14 pm AT&T security hole exposes iPad users' e-mails (AP)AP - AT&T Inc. on Wednesday acknowledged a security weak spot that exposed the e-mail addresses of apparently more than 100,000 users of Apple Inc.'s iPad, a breach that could make those people vulnerable to precision-targeted hacking attacks.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:11 pm Rumor: All T-Mobile phones to be sold for free on June 19Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones
Logically, one of the most popular gifts on Father’s day is probably a brand new cell phone. Hoping to capitalize on possible cell phone purchases on June 19 in anticipation of Father’s Day, T-Mobile might be making every single phone for free. The details are hazy at best and no one’s really sure how plans and upgrades will work towards eligibility of a new and free phone. According to TmoNews, a document containing the script of a new commercial was leaked and the script mentions that every phone is available for free, but the only catch is the customer must sign up for a family plan. Some of the phones mentioned in the commcercial script include the Garminfone, BlackBerry phones, HTC HD 2, and even the myTouch 3G (which could be sporting Android 2.2 by this time). Hopefully T-Mobile will confirm the news shortly and save a bunch of people the hassle of finding their father a gift on Father’s Day. If the rumor does pan out, it certainly looks like a great deal by T-Mobile. Read [TmoNews] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:10 pm Is IVF Good Value For Money?Why funding of assisted reproduction is sound fiscal policyChildren conceived by Medically Assisted Reproduction (MAR) have fiscal implications for government both in terms of future government spending and tax revenue.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:09 pm Like human anatomy? There’s a really awesome iPad app for that
[via CNET]
Source: CrunchGear | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:00 pm AT&T Leaks Emails Addresses of 114,000 iPad UsersHugh Pickens writes "Daily Tech reports that in what is one of the biggest leaks of email addresses in recent history, a group called Goatse Security has published the personal email addresses of 114,067 iPad 3G purchasers in what appears to be a legal fashion by querying a public interface that AT&T accidentally left exposed. Apparently AT&T left a script on its public website, which when handed an ICC-ID would respond back with the email address of the subscriber. This apparently was intended for an AJAX-style response inside AT&T's web apps. Gawker reports that it's possible that confidential information about every iPad 3G owner in the US has been exposed. 'This is going to hurt the telecommunications company's already poor image with iPhone and iPad customers, and complicate its very profitable relationship with Apple,' writes Ryan Tate, adding that the leak is likely to unnerve customers thinking of buying iPads that connect to AT&T's cellular network. 'Although the security vulnerability was confined to AT&T servers, Apple bears responsibility for ensuring the privacy of its users, who must provide the company with their email addresses to activate their iPads.' In a statement, AT&T says that the issue was escalated to the highest levels of the company and that it has essentially turned off the feature that provided the email addresses. 'We are continuing to investigate and will inform all customers whose email addresses and ICC IDS may have been obtained,' says AT&T. 'We take customer privacy very seriously and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 7:56 pm Don’t Buy The HTC EVO, It Is A Seriously Flawed Device
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.
Source: CrunchGear | 9 Jun 2010 | 7:39 pm Is Apple ignoring the Mac? 'Yup,' says Fake Steve; 'wrong,' counters real Steve (Ben Patterson)Ben Patterson - Monday's keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference was nirvana for anyone focused on the iPad or the iPhone. But whither the Mac? Is Apple ignoring its old bread and butter? That's what the writer behind "Fake Steve Jobs" claims in a recent column; the real Steve Jobs, however, counters that the charge is "completely wrong."Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Jun 2010 | 7:25 pm Google launches Google Maps Navigation in 11 more countriesSection: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Web, Web Apps, Websites, Google
For users with Android phones running Android 1.6 or higher, you can take advantage of the new map database in these countries. In order to receive the 4.2 upgrade, you need to go to the Android Market and download the update to Google Maps. In addition, in a separate announcement, Google has integrated French, German, Italian, and Spanish languages for voice search. Voice Search allows you to speak out a destination in any compatible language and the app will try to match text to your spoken words. Unfortunately, voice commands with the four additional languages is only available for phone running Android 2.0 and higher. Read [Google] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 9 Jun 2010 | 7:05 pm Microsoft Office Simplified For the Web [Personal Technology]I am writing this in Microsoft Word, hardly an unusual way to author a document. But I’m not using Word as you know it—part of the large, complex Microsoft Office suite installed on your computer’s hard drive. Instead, I am using a new, streamlined version of Word that for the first time resides on remote servers you reach through the Internet. [ See post to watch video ] This new version of Word is used inside a Web browser. It works on both Windows PCs and Macs, and via the newer versions of the major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. It’s free and it doesn’t require you to have regular Office on your computer. Word isn’t the only Office component that’s now available in a free online version. Microsoft (MSFT) has created similar simplified versions of Excel, PowerPoint and its OneNote note-taking program as part of the free online suite called Office Web Apps, which is available at office.live.com. To use the new online Office, you’ll need a free account for the company’s broader Windows Live online service. Microsoft is also releasing a new version of its traditional desktop Office for Windows next week, called Office 2010. But in my view, the online edition is the most interesting new development for consumers in this round of updates. It’s part of the broader trend toward cloud computing—doing tasks online rather than with desktop programs. And it’s meant to help the software giant compete with rival online office suites from competitors like Google (GOOG) and Zoho. I’ve been testing Office Web Apps on both Windows and Mac computers, and in all four major browsers, and I like it. It has some downsides and is still a work in progress. It lacks many of the more sophisticated features of the local, desktop version of Office. In fact, Microsoft—apparently trying to protect its profitable desktop suite—refers to Office Web Apps as a “companion” to desktop Office, for “light” work.  The Office Web Apps version of Word is used inside a Web browser. But these are capable, if simpler, programs that look and feel like their desktop counterparts and they will likely meet the needs of many consumers who produce basic documents, even if they don’t own desktop Office. Also, the new Web Apps are connected to a generous 25 gigabytes of free online storage for your documents, via a companion Microsoft online storage system called SkyDrive. Another big benefit: Microsoft boasts its Office Web Apps produce documents that use the same file formats as the desktop programs and thus, look fully accurate when opened in desktop Office. The company calls this “fidelity.” In my tests, this claim held true, at least on my Windows PC. (A revised version of Microsoft Office for the Mac, tuned to work with Web Apps, is in the works.) The new version of the desktop Office suite also has many new features, but a lot of these are for power users or corporate users, and, overall, it isn’t nearly as big a change as its predecessor, Office 2007. Among the new desktop features consumers will notice and use are the extension of the consolidated top tool bar called the “Ribbon,” introduced in the 2007 version in most Office programs, to Outlook; a new unified view for printing, sharing and previewing documents, called “Backstage”; and richer graphics. You can also now customize the Ribbon. In my tests of the streamlined Office Web Apps, I was able to use a variety of fonts and styles, insert and resize photos, and create tables. And I was able to view my documents, though not edit them, on an iPhone and iPad. This also works with other mobile devices. One glitch I ran into in the Word Web App was that, if you use a tab to start a paragraph, it changes the left margin of each subsequent line. Microsoft says this is a bug and it is working to fix it. Another downside for some users may be that the Web Apps only directly open documents from, and save them to, your online SkyDrive storage, not your hard disk. So you have to upload files from your hard disk to SkyDrive to edit them in the Web Apps. And, like most cloud-based programs, they can only be used when you’re online. There are numerous things you may be used to doing in desktop Office that can’t be done in the online version. For instance, you can’t drag photos by the corners to resize them, embed videos, create slide transitions or add new spreadsheet charts. You can, with one click, open a Web version of your document in the full desktop program, to take advantage of richer editing. However, this only works with certain combinations of browsers and desktop Office versions. Two of the Web apps, Excel and OneNote, allow multiple users to log on and work on the same document together. The others don’t yet. In fact, in my tests, I couldn’t open a Word document locally until I had closed it online, and vice versa. Microsoft says it is working on expanding simultaneous use to all the apps. Office Web Apps are a good start for Microsoft at bringing its productivity expertise to the Web, and may be all many consumers need for creating simple documents. Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos, free, at walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com. Source: All Things Digital | 9 Jun 2010 | 7:03 pm Lomography’s “Spinner 360″ panoramic film camera looks manual-riffic
So they’re putting out a new gadget this week, the Spinner 360, specifically for taking panoramas. And how do you think it works? Just as funcontrollable as the Diana — with the benefit of full-bleed negatives! How cool is that?! Basically you load this thing up with 120 roll film, set the exposure estimate, and pull the chain. It’ll spin around and roll the film at the same time, creating a pano shot thusly:
How fun is that? I know you can put together panoramas in some digital cameras, but I think we all know how weird they look. It’s a bit expensive for a single-serving device, though, at $150 (125 euros). Plus you have to buy film. It’s a lifestyle choice, I guess.
Source: CrunchGear | 9 Jun 2010 | 7:00 pm The Inside Story of How One Company Didn't Mine FacebookThefind, an up-and-coming shopping search engine, wanted to sift through users' Facebook profiles to personalize results. Then the Facebook privacy storm hit and things changed.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 6:20 pm One giant leap for oiled birds - msnbc.com
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Jun 2010 | 6:19 pm Jobs accused of misleading remark about Retina display – come on, give the man a break
Here’s what Steve said, word for word:
An expert has been consulted, who says that once we do the requisite optical conversions, at 12 inches the actual retinal resolving power would be something like 477 pixels per inch. Well, I have no doubt that in a way, he’s right. The retina (I’m assuming this is in the fovea) is an amazing visual machine, and I have no doubt that it would be able to discern individual pixels at 326ppi at 12 inches, if you presented it correctly. For all intents and purposes, however, including advertising purposes, Jobs is well within reasonable limits. And do you think they just made up the numbers? Apple has physicists too! By the way, if you want to call me an Apple apologist, this is coming from a guy who mocked Apple for the actually misleading “Twice as fast, half the price” campaign. The fact is that this display is a huge improvement over all existing displays, and it exceeds the DPI used to print books and magazines. He may have overstated it as being the actual physical limit of the retina, but the practical meaning of that remark was that you won’t (without effort) be able to differentiate between a 300ppi display and a 400ppi display. On the other hand, you could instantly see the difference between 200dpi and 300dpi. Anyway. It’s really a non-issue, since the display is the sharpest in the world and we’re complaining about how technically, physics allows for a sharper one. Let’s move on, if you please. Update: Just noticed this little tidbit, though. Samsung says the display isn’t all that, and that its Super AMOLED displays are just better. The pixel density just isn’t there, though. As I noted on the day of, 800×480 in a 4″ display is significantly less impressive than 960×640 on a 3.5″ display. He says the improvement is only “3-5%,” but that sounds like a nonsense number to me. The improvement is substantial and observable. But I do agree that Super AMOLED is a superior base technology for displays. It’s just not as good as Apple’s IPS tech right now.
Source: CrunchGear | 9 Jun 2010 | 6:15 pm NASA Astronomers to Observe Hayabusa's Fiery Homecomingcoondoggie writes "NASA said that a group of its astronomers will have a front row seat in Australia to watch the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa's high-speed, fiery return to Earth. It is bringing with it a hunk of the asteroid Itokawa. The spacecraft is expected to land in an unpopulated area of Australia at approximately midnight locally, or 7 am PDT, on Sunday, June 13. Some 30 NASA astronomers will be flying onboard a specially equipped DC-8 with instruments that can monitor Hayabusa's reentry."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 6:13 pm Photo Gallery: From Bat Bombs to Goo Guns -- Crazy Military ExperimentsYour tax dollars at work: Take a look at 11 weird and wacky projects from the Army, Navy Air Force, Marines and CIA.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 6:00 pm Moshi launches new Voice Control Bluetooth Car Speakerphone unitSection: Audio, Car Audio, Communications, Accessories, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Gadgets / Other, Transportation
The unit is designed to attach to the car visor by use of magnets; therefore, it is probably easy to use between cars. To make calls easier to hear, the Bluetooth unit features noise suppression and echo cancellation technology. With 7 hours of battery life on a single charge, the unit should hopefully last through long car rides and long phone calls. As of now, the Voice Control Bluetooth Car Speakerphone is available online through Moshi’s website and retails for $79.99. Product [Moshi] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 9 Jun 2010 | 5:52 pm Genetically Modified Eucalyptus Trees Ignite ControversyA paper company genetically modified the Eucalyptus tree, an aggressive invasive plant, to withstand colder temperatures.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 5:34 pm Sony releases a bunch of new 3D displays
Sony has decided, for the time being, to stay with active shutter glasses that will work with their proprietary high frame rate screens, offering full HD 3D images. Most of the TVs announced will require you to purchase an additional 3D sync transmitter and the 3D glasses, $50 and $150 each respectively. However, the granddaddy television, the Bravia XBR-LX900 series will include both the sync transmitter and two pairs of the active shutter glasses. Those top-of-the-line displays come in either the 60-inch flavor for $5000 or 52-inch for $4000, and both have onboard 802.11n to connect to your network. Other models down the line include the XBR-HX909 with 52-inch and 46-inch variants for $4,000 and $3,500 respectively and the KDL-HX800 with 55-inch, 46-inch and 40-inch models going for $3,400, $2,700 and $2,100 respectively. None of which include either the glasses or sync transmitter.
The coolest part of the announcement is for those with iPhones and soon for those with Android. With an app called BD remote, you can control the players right from in the app. So, if the remote is stuck in a seat cushion, don’t worry about looking for it. Sounds like the Harmony app has a competitor. Here’s the full press release: Pre-sales Begin for BRAVIA 3D HDTVs; 3D Upgrade For Earlier 2010 Blu-ray Models
Source: CrunchGear | 9 Jun 2010 | 5:30 pm Google's Caffeine: a Transition From Months to Seconds - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Jun 2010 | 5:23 pm Using the iPad for School and Updating the Droid Incredible [Mossberg's Mailbox]Q: We have two daughters, ages 14 and 13. Both are big users of our sole family computer to watch TV shows on the Web as well as to do their school work. Could an iPad serve as their school/recreation computer? A: It obviously depends on the nature of their homework and other activities. The iPad is great for video watching and note taking. And Apple does sell a $30 add-on office suite on which they could write papers or prepare presentations. Other such suites are, or will soon be, available. But there are downsides. For instance, there’s no built-in printing. As for TV, ABC has a gorgeous iPad app and Apple will sell you TV shows from iTunes that play beautifully. But many websites present video in the Flash format, which the iPad doesn’t support. Q: I am considering purchasing the Droid Incredible as my next smartphone but am concerned about the HTC Sense user interface and the Android operating system working together on a single device. As more Android updates are released over the next few years, do you think the Sense UI will continue to work in harmony with Android? A: Since I can’t predict the future, I can’t say for sure. But HTC insists that its Sense software, which provides added graphical and functional features to Android, won’t impede future releases. The company also notes that a user can turn off all the Sense widgets and other features. You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online for free at the All Things Digital website, http://walt.allthingsd.com. Source: All Things Digital | 9 Jun 2010 | 5:22 pm Synopsys Delivers Comprehensive Custom Design Solution for TSMC Analog/Mixed-Signal Reference Flow 1.0MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Synopsys, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Jun 2010 | 5:00 pm NYC sidewalk with tourist lane: culprits revealedSeveral weeks ago, Cory posted about a prankster painting a "tourist lane" on a busy New York City sidewalk. Turns out, the culprits were none other than our friends at Improv Everywhere! Bravo! "The Tourist Lane" Source: Boing Boing | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:57 pm Canonical Developing Ubuntu OS For Tabletssnydeq writes "Canonical is preparing a version of the Ubuntu OS for tablet computers as the company looks to extend its presence in the mobile space, InfoWorld reports. The OS will be a lightweight version of Linux with a simplified, touch-friendly user interface, and tablets with the Ubuntu OS could become available late in winter 2011. The focus will be on developing an OS with a simplified user interface that provides quick access to the most-used applications. Development efforts will also focus on adding on-screen keyboard features and compatibility for multitouch drivers."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:57 pm Hello, Can We Speak To Nokia’s Steve Jobs? … Hello? For the last few weeks I've become increasingly fascinated by someone at Nokia. That person is Anssi Vanjoki.
Vanjoki is an interesting guy. Last year he was named as one of the 25 most influential people on the Web. Why? He is Nokia's most visible advocate of what Nokia still, perhaps rather quaintly, calls its "multimedia computers".
And he's not some grey executive. Back in 2002 he was awarded what was believed at the time to be the most expensive speeding ticket ever, $103,600, after being caught breaking the speed limit on his Harley Davidson motorcycle in Helsinki.
But this week he hasn't been quite so visible. As Apple and Steve Jobs unveiled the fourth generation of the iPhone in San Francisco, there appeared to be not a murmur from Nokia, still the world's largest maker of cell phones. Where was Anssi's thundering response? We called Nokia.
Source: TechCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:53 pm Amazon releases new stop-motion-style commercial for the KindleSection: Gadgets / Other, ebooks Amazon has recently released the third in a series of stop-motion-style commercials for the Kindle. Basically what we have is another 30 second television commercial for the Kindle which is touting the ability to have “books in 60 seconds.” But when you watch the commercial what you see is a mother at her kids bus stop, the kid getting on the bus, the mother turning into a vampire and flying away then ending up on a beach and turning into an Egyptian who dives into the sand and goes underwater to begin scuba diving and ends up kissing a fish. Wow, quite a bit of fun for 30 seconds. Watch [YouTube] Via [Kindle on Facebook] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:41 pm A Quick Look At KDE SC 4.5 Beta 1dmbkiwi writes "The latest in the 4.x series of the KDE Software Compilation is due to be released in early August 2010. With the first beta of this release recently unleashed, I thought I'd download the openSuse packages and see what 4.5's got in store for us."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:39 pm BP's Social Media Campaign Going About as Well as Capping That WellBP latest image-control gambit? Purchasing several red-hot search terms -- including 'oil spill' -- on search engines to direct people to a company web page touting the company’s cleanup efforts.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:35 pm Sideways: The First iPad-Only Magazine Is About . . . The iPad
While the print magazine industry is hanging its hopes on the iPad to lead it to the digital promised land where people actually pay for digital editions, it is still stuck with adapting a product designed for paper to the screen. But what if you threw the paper out to begin with and started with a magazine meant to be read only on the iPad? If you do that, you get Sideways, a mag app that claims to be the first iPad-only magazine. Its first issue is on sale now in the App Store for $3.99.
Sideways is an iPad magazine that covers, well, the iPad. There are articles about apps for the iPad and music for the iPad and training for a marathon with the iPad (my tip is you leave it at home). “You have a built-in demographic,” says CEO Charles Stack. “Who are the readers? The people who own an iPad.” There are also other articles which would appeal to that affluent, techy demographic. The first issue has a lot of World Cup themed articles, including one on World Cup apps, a guide with venues and dates, and a primer on how to fake your way through the World Cup. So what makes it different than Wired‘s successful iPad mag or Time‘s. “It was ground-up designed for the iPad, not an adaption of a print magazine,” says Stack, who founded Books.com in the early 1990s before he sold it to Barnes & Noble. The articles are laid out in a familiar magazine format, taking advantage of the iPad’s large screen and lovely fonts. Video and audio is also blended in where a photo or graphic might be in a print magazine (still, nothing too radical here—Wired and Time are doing the same thing). You scroll through pages up and down like on the Web, not sideways, which is silly given the name of the magazine and the fact that side-swiping is becoming the norm for iPad magazine apps.
Where it starts to be different is when it departs from the printed word and starts to feel more like an app. For instance, the article on World Cup stadiums and dates pops open a map studded with all the stadiums across South Africa. There is an interactive timeline of the entire iPhone product family in another article. And there is a photo gallery app which shows large, full-screen high-res photos from events that occurred over the past month. It is kind of Life 2.0. Sideways has six full-time staffers, a lot of freelancers, and is based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is self-funded. For now there are no ads, but the music reviews all have affiliate links to the iTunes store. And you can imagine similar arrangements with Amazon affiliate links for reviews of other types of products. Stack sees Sideways as a flagship product for a publishing platform he will eventually license to other magazine and book publishers. New ideas are more likely to come from people like Stack and others outside the industry. Still, I think charging $3.99 a pop for a digital magazine is going to be a hard sell, especially once we start getting the same experience on the Web. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:32 pm Microsoft expands Games on Demand service to non-Live titles
Seeing that perhaps a GfWL layer might better be advertised as a value-add rather than a necessary component, Microsoft is opening up its digital delivery system to non-GfWL games. They’re kicking off the expansion of the store with a sale on Prince of Persia games, specifically The Sands of Time and Warrior Within &mdsah; both cost $2.49, which is a hell of a price. Now’s a good chance to grab them as gifts or just rainy day games if you never played them. There’s also the new PoP game, but I think I’ll wait for the price to come down. $50? Not so much! I liked the reboot, though.
Source: CrunchGear | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:30 pm Robed “Prophets” March In Front Of Apple’s WWDC Heralding “The End Of Native”
The “prophet” in question was on the wrong side of the street, but it didn’t take long to figure out that he was protesting Apple’s WWDC developer conference, which is in full swing this week. Three other men are currently marching in front of the conference center dressed in similar garb, each of them holding a sign with a different slogan — things like “Do not try and bend 3.3.1. That’s impossible” and “No one can be told what the End of Native is. You have to see it for yourself.” Each sign instructs viewers to head to endofnative.com. I asked one of the ‘prophets’ for more information, and he directed me to the group’s website, which is bare save for this message:
Obviously this is all a marketing ploy for an upcoming product, but it’s pretty funny (especially since these outfits were almost certainly repurposed Jedi costumes). I’m sure we’ll be hearing more from these guys in a week. Note that the website’s message is saying that the end of native isn’t coming, but that a new HTML5-based mobile framework is. This all of course stems from the long-standing tension between developers and the App Store’s increasingly restrictive rules (the aforementioned 3.3.1 is the rule that banned developers from using cross-compiling tools, like the one Adobe made to allow Flash apps to be used on the iPhone). When Apple CEO Steve Jobs kicked off his keynote at WWDC earlier this week, he addressed this, explaining that developers would have to follow the rules on the curated App Store but were free to do whatever they wanted in the browser. That obviously didn’t satisfy everyone.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:17 pm iPhone 4's "Retina Display" Claims Challengedadeelarshad82 writes "Of the many things that buyers might need to know about the new iPhone, Raymond Soneira — president of DisplayMate Technolgies — added one more to the list. Soneira challenged Apple's claims that Apple's new iPhone contains a so-called 'retina display.' According to Soneira, the resolution of the retina is in angular measure, 50 cycles per degree, where a cycle is a line pair, which is two pixels, so the angular resolution of the eye is 0.6 arc minutes per pixel. So, if you hold an iPhone at the typical 12 inches from your eyes, that works out to 477 pixels per inch. At 8 inches it's 716 ppi. You have to hold iPhone 4 out about 18 inches before it falls to 318 ppi. So the iPhone has significantly lower resolution than the retina."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:13 pm Natural oil seeps: Not proof oil spill worries are overblown
Forbes and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour say we shouldn't really worry much about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill—after all, natural oil seeps are constantly leaking hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and everything is fine. So, are they right? As you might guess, there's a bit of distortion going on here. Natural seeps are real—kind of the underwater oil deposit equivalent of a natural spring of water popping up through the ground on land. They really do release a lot of oil into the world's oceans—as much as 14 million barrels per year. But, as Cutler Cleveland, Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at Boston University, wrote on the Oil Drum blog, they do that at a much slower rate than man-made oil spills.
Natural seeps also don't run constantly or consistently. They stop and start, and put out more or less oil over time. And most of the seeps have been seeping for a very long time. Why does all this matter? I've said it before and I'll say it again: Dose makes the poison. Smaller amounts of oil, released a slower rate, into a local ecosystem that has evolved in tandem with the ongoing natural seep isn't as big of a deal as a whole metric crap-ton of oil dumped quickly into a larger area of ocean. (Just like smaller amounts of Corexit oil dispersant can be legitimately safe, even though we don't know anything about the toxicity of the product when used in huge quantities.) The existence of natural oil seeps is not a legitimate argument against the very real need for concern about the effects of a massive oil spill. Tell your friends. And maybe Gov. Barbour, if you get a chance. Oil Drum blog writers Gail Tverberg and Prof. Dave Summers were instrumental in answering my questions about oil seeps. For more details on the seeps, read Cutler Cleveland's full post, and this follow-up by Summers. Tar ball on the beach in Alabama. Tar balls can be cause by both natural seeps and spills. It's impossible to know which without testing. Photo by Flickr user EveMBH, via CC Source: Boing Boing | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:11 pm AT&T Breach Exposes iPad Owners' Email Addresses [Digital Daily]
A security breach at AT&T has exposed the email address of thousands iPad owners–among them a who’s-who of the media and political elite. Valleywag reports that by exploiting a vulnerability in the AT&T Web site, hacker group Goatse Security was able to collect email addresses associated with the SIM integrated circuit card identifiers, or ICC IDs, in the 3G version of Apple’s (AAPL) new slate device. And it collected some 114,000 of them–from New York Times Co. (NYT) CEO Janet Robinson to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel–before notifying AT&T (T) of the breach so the carrier could repair it. Interestingly, AT&T claims it was a business customer who alerted it to vulnerability on Monday, and not Goatse or Valleywag. The carrier says that the only information compromised were ICC IDs and the email addresses attached to them. And contrary to some rumors making the rounds, AT&T says it is not advising iPad 3G owners to disable 3G. Obviously, this is an ugly humiliation for AT&T. But as a security breach, it’s not devastating. The only data compromised were email addresses and ICC IDs. The former could be sold to spammers, and I’m not sure there’s much ill to be done with the latter. Which is not to downplay the severity of the incident. AT&T’s negligence here is deeply troubling–and worth remembering every time we entrust our personal data to someone else. AT&T, which would not tell me how many exactly Apple iPad 3G users are affected, did release the following statement:
[Further details to follow] Source: All Things Digital | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:05 pm Enjoy classic arcade games, pinball at California ExtremeFROM GAMERTELL - When’s the last time you played Sinistar or Robotron 2084 on an actual arcade cabinet? Well here’s your big chance, buddy… Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:02 pm A Summer Romance Between Founder and Venture Capitalist [Voices]By Ty McMahan, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal Here’s a summer blockbuster for you: In a world where many entrepreneurs see venture capital as a necessary evil, three men look past term-sheet tussles to build a new company, and make friendships along the way. “Venture Capital: A Love Story.” Starring: Keith Smith as The CEO, Jeff Malek as The CTO and Brad Feld as The Investor. In a 1,700-word blog post Tuesday, Smith, CEO of BigDoor Media, nearly wrote the screenplay behind a recent funding round. He crafted the tale of meeting Foundry Group’s Feld and how the VC’s unorthodox approach to learning about the company ultimately cemented Smith’s desire to have him as an investor. Read the rest of this post on the original site Source: All Things Digital | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:00 pm Google Updates Chrome Frame Add-On for Internet ExplorerA new update comes to Google Chrome Frame, an add-on for Internet Explorer that essentially embeds Google Chrome inside of Microsoft's browser. It lets IE users -- even those running the antiquated IE6 -- experience advanced HTML5 web apps in their browsers.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:00 pm Report: AT&T security breach exposed 114k iPad usersIf you own a cellular iPad, an AT&T web address has exposed your personal info to anyone wily enough to ping it, reports Ryan Tate at Gawker. Your email address, and a tracking ID unique your SIM card, were open to any who may have discovered the hole before it was closed.According to the data we were given by the web security group that exploited vulnerabilities on the AT&T network, we believe 114,000 user accounts have been compromised, although it's possible that confidential information about every iPad 3G owner in the U.S. has been exposed. We contacted Apple for comment but have yet to hear back. We also reached out to AT&T for comment.Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed [Gawker] Source: Boing Boing | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:31 pm It seems Sprint didn’t sell 3X the Instinct and Palm Pre combinedSection: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
What’s more, analysts are dumping on Sprint as well. “BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk said he was cutting his estimate for EVO sales in the first weekend to 150,000 from his prior estimate of 250,000 to 300,000.” That’s up to 1/2 fewer sales for you non-math types. With sold out signs at Sprint stores across the USA, the sales figures are not likely to grow much more. Read: [Reuters]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:29 pm TSMC Selects Solido for Variation-Aware Custom IC Design in its Analog Mixed-Signal Reference Flow 1.0SAN JOSE, Calif., June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Solido Design Automation, Inc. today announced that TSMC has selected Solido Variation Designer for its Analog/Mixed-signal (AMS) Reference Flow 1.0 targeting TSMC 28nm advanced process technology.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:29 pm Univ. of California Faculty May Boycott Nature PublisherMarian the Librarian writes "Nature Publishing Group (NPG), which publishes the prestigious journal Nature along with 67 affiliated journals, has proposed a 400% increase in the price of its license to the University of California. UC is poised to just say no to exorbitant price gouging. If UC walks, the faculty are willing to stage a boycott; they could, potentially, decline to submit papers to NPG journals, decline to review for them and resign from their editorial boards."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:29 pm Amazing skydiving photography
Photographer Mike Burdon is also a skydiver. He was chosen for an invite-only 16-person jump at the end of May, and took the opportunity to get some astounding shots of humans in free-fall. I was curious about the coloring in these pictures and asked Burdon about it. He says...
That said, the Behance Gallery of all the shots in this series is tagged with the keyword, "Infrared". Speculate from that as you will.
Source: Boing Boing | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:06 pm CreditCards.com: Weekly Credit Card Rate ReportAUSTIN, Texas, June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Interest rates on new credit card offers surged higher this week, according to the CreditCards.com Weekly Credit Card Rate Report, following some adjustments by Capital One.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:05 pm Saturday in L.A.: comedy show by Second City vetsFor years I've been banging around helping the Boingers out with odd jobs - and regardless of how many times someone has said "That's really neat - you should blog it!" I've always run screaming. This show is more than worth sharing... If you are in Los Angeles this Saturday, June 12th, you have the opportunity to see two of the damn funniest people ever to take the stage, Jane Morris and Fred Kaz, in their show "All of These Things are True but Some of Them Never Happened." Both are long-time veterans of the Second City, writers, directors, and in Fred's case one of the most amazing jazz musicians you'll ever have the pleasure of hearing. Jane, a founder of the Second City's E.T.C. a stage, film and TV performer, director, and comedy club owner has six stories to tell. All of them are based on true stories, veer off into the strange. She'll take you on an incredible tour of the bizarre and ironic as she explains such things as why everyone needs a new head or how divorce and theoretical physics are inter-related. Each piece performed by Jane is then tied together by the music and storytelling of Fred Kaz. Fred is truly a master, if not the master. For thirty years, Fred served as musical director of the Second City Chicago. His music brings the comedy alive. Fred is an incredibly accomplished composer, writer, director and jazz pianist. Above is Fred playing at the Fanatic Salon last year. not the greatest quality but it gives you an idea. You can also find some of his jazz on his site, and his album "Eastern Exposure" can be had on iTunes. Jane and Fred are planning to take the show to Chicago and New York in the near future and this may be the last time they run it in LA for a while. The theater, the Fanatic Salon, is a small and intimate venue - you couldn't pick a better spot. "All of These Things are True but Some of Them Never Happened" plays at the Fanatic Salon at 8pm this Saturday, June 12th, 2010. The fanaticSalon is located at 3815 Sawtelle Blvd. in Culver City on the SW corner of Venice and Sawtelle. For more info, call 310.622.2046.
A rare treat. Timberwolf (a.k.a. Firefox) Alpha 1 For AmigaOSAn anonymous reader writes "We're happy to announce the availability of the first alpha release of Timberwolf, the AmigaOS port of the popular Firefox browser. Timberwolf needs AmigaOS 4.1 Update 2 installed. Please read the documentation for information about usage and limitations. This is an alpha release, meaning it will have a lot of problems still, and be slower than it should be. We are releasing it as a small 'Thank you' to all those that have donated in the past to show that development is still going on. Timberwolf is available on os4depot.net. For further information and feedback, check the Timberwolf support forum on amigans.net."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 3:00 pm Speck Artsprojekt iPhone 3G/S case giveawayFROM APPLETELL - With the cooperation of the fine people at Speck, we’re giving away a total of five Fitted Artsprojekt Cases for the iPhones 3G and S. Three people will win. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:55 pm Official Kanji Count Increasing Due To ElectronicsJoshuaInNippon writes "Those who have studied Japanese know how imposing kanji, or Chinese characters, can be in learning the language. There is an official list of 1,945 characters that one is expected to understand to graduate from a Japanese high school or be considered fluent. For the first time in 29 years, that list is set to change — increasing by nearly 10% to 2,136 characters. 196 are being added, and five deleted. The added characters are ones believed to be found commonly in life use, but are considered to be harder to write by hand and therefore overlooked in previous editions of the official list. Japanese officials seem to have recognized that with the advent and spread of computers in daily life, writing in Japanese has simplified dramatically. Changing the phonetic spelling of a word to its correct kanji only requires a couple of presses of a button, rather than memorizing an elaborate series of brush strokes. At the same time, the barrage of words that people see has increased, thereby increasing the necessity to understand them. Computers have simplified the task of writing in Japanese, but inadvertently now complicated the lives of Japanese language learners. (If you read Japanese and are interested in more details on specific changes, Slashdot.jp has some information!)"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:42 pm iBroadway: Broadway goes mobile
Special content will be available in the iBroadway app for the Tony Awards, including a contest to win tickets to a Tony Awards dress rehearsal, and some special behind-the-scenes video. I’ve only ever seen one Broadway show (Cats!), so this isn’t the kind of app that I’m going to use. If theatre is your thing, though, this looks like a really good way to keep up on the shows. iBroadway is free in the app store, so break a leg.
Source: MobileCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:30 pm Kindle's First Waterproof Case Is a Knight in Plastic ArmorFinally, after all these years: a go-anywhere, withstand-anything, tougher-than-a-coffin-nail case for the Kindle.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:30 pm Kindle's First Waterproof Case Is a Knight in Plastic ArmorFinally, after all these years: a go-anywhere, withstand-anything, tougher-than-a-coffin-nail case for the Kindle.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:30 pm Vimicro Reports First Quarter 2010 Financial ResultsBEIJING, June 9 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- Vimicro International Corporation (Nasdaq: VIMC) ("Vimicro"), a leading multimedia semiconductor and solution provider, today announced financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2010. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20070528/CNM014LOGO ) First Quarter 2010 Net revenue in the first quarter of 2010 was $20.1 million, compared to $10.0 million in the first quarter of 2009 and $23.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:30 pm Twitter hits 2 billion tweets a monthSection: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking
Twitter continues it’s growth and is now hitting 2 billion tweets a month. It’s an impressive number no matter how you slice it. It works out to 741 tweets per second. Back in December of 2009, Twitter was pushing 1 million tweets a month. In the past 6 months, Twitter has managed to double their volume thanks to developers use of their APIs for things like foursquare. Can Twitter keep this growth going? These numbers are culled from Twitter usage, not the number of Twitter users. The data comes from Pingdom, and here is there methodology: “Methodology: To be able to calculate the number of tweets per month, we tracked down a tweet from the first couple of minutes of each month. Using the sequence numbers of these tweets, we could then calculate the number of tweets for each month. Since finding old tweets is more or less impossible with Twitter’s own search engine, we used Google, then verified the tweet time stamp by looking at the tweet itself.” Read: [Pingdom] Image credit: Pingdom
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:14 pm Electron Database Corporation Extends Footprint to Asia with New Engineering Centre in SingaporeCLEVELAND, June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Electron Database Corporation (Electron) has announced that it will expand its operations to Asia with support from Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Infocomm Investments Pte Ltd.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:09 pm Jigsaw Named 'Cool Vendor' by Leading Analyst FirmSAN MATEO, Calif., June 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Jigsaw, the leader in crowd-sourced data services, has been included in the list of "Cool Vendors" in the "Cool Vendors in CRM Sales, 2010, Michael Dunne, et. al., 30 March, 2010" report by Gartner, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:01 pm Dice Holdings, Inc. to Present at William Blair & Company's 30th Annual Growth Stock ConferenceNEW YORK, June 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Dice Holdings, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Jun 2010 | 2:00 pm iPhone 4’s ‘Retina’ Display Claims Are False Marketing
The iPhone 4’s screen may be the best mobile display yet, but its resolution does not exceed the human retina, as Steve Jobs claims. The math just doesn’t add up, said Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate Technologies, who explained that the iPhone 4’s purported “retina display” was a misleading marketing term. “It is reasonably close to being a perfect display, but Steve pushed it a little too far,” Soneira said. During his keynote speech, Jobs said the iPhone 4’s display had a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch. He claimed that this resolution exceeds the limit of the human retina, which Jobs said was 300 pixels per inch for a display about a foot away. “It turns out there’s a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch, that when you hold something around to 10 to 12 inches away from your eyes, is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels,” Jobs said.
Soneira, who possesses a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton and has been studying displays for 20 years, said it was inaccurate to measure the resolution of the eye in terms of pixels, because the eye actually has an angular resolution of 50 cycles per degree. Therefore, if we were to compare the resolution limit of the eye with pixels on a screen, we must convert angular resolution to linear resolution. After conversions are made, a more accurate “retina display” would have a pixel resolution of 477 pixels per inch at 12 inches, Soneira calculated. He noted, however, that he was confident Apple will have the best phone display on the market. Like the iPad’s LCD display, the iPhone 4’s screen features In-Plane Switching technology, in which crystal molecules are oriented so their motion is parallel to the panel rather than perpendicular. For viewers, the result is a very wide viewing angle — up to 180 degrees — with brilliant color. Soneria added that we might not realistically need anything better than 326 ppi. For comparison, glossy magazines are typically printed at 300 dots per inch. Soneira said he wanted to highlight that “retina display” is a symptom of a larger problem of market puffery in the display industry. Basically, many manufacturers exaggerate claims about their display specifications — everything from resolution to viewing angle, and from brightness to contrast — and they have to do it because everyone is doing it. “The marketing puffery is now in control,” Soneira said. “Everything that’s being said now is just this superamplified imaginary nonsense, and the only way to get people’s attention now is making more outlandish statements.” For example, Soneira discarded Sharp’s Quattron TVs that claimed to display four primary colors (as opposed to the traditional three) as utter nonsense. He explained in an earlier Maximum PC guest article that all television and movie content is produced and color balanced in the traditional RGB color arrangement. Sharp Quattron’s fourth primary color is yellow, and there is nothing for it to do because yellow is already reproduced with mixtures of the red and green primaries, he said. “[Market puffery] hurts companies that make good products, like Apple, because they can’t really put the specs out because everybody is lying,” Soneira said. “If you and I have the world’s greatest display, and we launched it and put down the real scientific numbers, we’d go bankrupt because our numbers would look like the worst display being made.” Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:29 pm iPhone 4's 'Retina' Display Claims Are False MarketingApple's claims of the iPhone 4's "retina" display exceeding the resolution of the human eye are false, according to a display expert.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:29 pm iPhone 4's 'Retina' Display Claims Are False MarketingApple's claims of the iPhone 4's "retina" display exceeding the resolution of the human eye are false, according to a display expert.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:29 pm Moto Droid, T-Mobile myTouch 3G to get Android 2.2
It’s getting harder and harder to keep track of which Android handsets are running on any given version of the platform — but if you’re making an effort to do so, we’ve got two impending amendments for you. Yesterday afternoon, TmoNews got ahold of the memo above, confirming that the myTouch 3G (in addition to the myTouch Slide, which we already knew would be getting updated) will be getting Android 2.2. There it is, in good ol’ plain English: “Coming soon, we plan to update existing myTouch 3G phones — not just our new Slide — to the latest software version, Android 2.2″ But wait, there’s more! Our buddies over at Slashgear reached out to Motorola, who confirmed that the Droid (which just got bumped to 2.1 back in late March) will be getting the 2.2 update treatment “in the near future”. Straight from the Moto rep’s mouth:
Of course, terms like “soon” and “in the near future” tend to have wildly different definitions throughout the mobile industry. To a customer, “soon” means next week; to a carrier, “soon” means “as soon as we’re done testing, patching, re-testing, re-patching, and then certifying the update for distribution.”
Source: MobileCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:18 pm Samsung Galaxy S Android smartphone tipped for June 21 release with T-MobileSection: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile  The rumors surrounding T-Mobile and the Samsung Galaxy S with Android have been floating around for a while now. That said, some are suggesting that the official announcement is coming soon and we may see a release on June 21st. Of course, with the earlier email teasing from Samsung it may be more realistic to believe June 29th at this point. But either way—it looks like the Samsung Galaxy S will be available with T-Mobile sooner as opposed to later. Anyway, this is still in the rumor stage, however it is coming from TmoNews and a “trusted source” which does lend some credibility. Read [Samsung Galaxy S] Via [TmoNews] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:10 pm Autism Linked to Dozens of Genetic MutationsAlthough some genetic glitches are inherited from parents, many arise for the first time in the person with autism.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 1:01 pm Wanna Take a Ride? Put Your 'Face in Space'Ever wanted to go to space? I sure do... I still do. Now you can go into space! Well, at least a picture of your face can.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 12:53 pm BeagleBoard Gives New Power to Open Source Gadgets
Open source hardware hobbyists now have a chipset to play with that’s comparable to the powerful processors found in smartphones such as the Nexus One or HTC Incredible. Texas Instruments has released a new version of its low-power, single-board computer called BeagleBoard-xM. It’s based on the same 1-GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor that drives the most sophisticated smartphones today. That gives it far more processing power than the leading open-source microcontroller platform, Arduino, which many hobbyists currently use to create robots, sensors, toys and other DIY devices. The BeagleBoard-xM has multimedia features similar to the processor seen in the Palm Pre and Motorola Droid, and includes on-board ethernet, five USB 2.0 ports and 512 MB of memory. “It’s a fully loaded, open platform that allows users to run multiple applications and embed them in devices,” says Jason Kridner, ARM software architecture manager and BeagleBoard community manager. “We wanted to offer something that’s cheap, ups the performance level and has sufficient memory.” The first BeagleBoard debuted in 2008, targeting hardware hobbyists who wanted a powerful chipset to build home-brewed gadgets. But, so far, it has been eclipsed by the simpler open source microcontroller Arduino. Arduino has become a big hit among DIYers powering an eclectic variety of projects including electronic textiles, a fire-breathing dragon and many robots. BeagleBoard isn’t as popular, even though it packs in more technical firepower. Some hobbyists say that could change as open source hardware hackers get more ambitious and move beyond what a simple microcontroller can do. The 3-inch–square BeagleBoard-xM runs a full Linux operating system with desktop managers and office applications. It also includes a 2-D and 3-D graphics accelerator, a port to add a computer monitor and an S-video port for TV. BeagleBoard will let hobbyists and open source hardware enthusiasts go where the Arduino won’t, says Justin Huynh, a open source hardware hacker. “A lot of people complain that Arduino is not powerful enough and if you want something that’s more technical and intensive it is just not good enough,” he says. “So BeagleBoard can be a very interesting alternative.” And at $180, the BeagleBoard-xM is inexpensive enough to be a technical toy for DIYers, says Hyunh. “What we have seen happen in the Arduino community is now happening with the BeagleBoard,” he says. Here are four cool ideas that use the BeagleBoard:
BeagleBoard Videowall
There are at least two ways to create a large display: Buy a giant TV screen from Best Buy, or MacGyver a solution using multiple PC monitors. The BeagleBoard Videowall tries the latter. It has six 19-inch LCD monitors networked together over USB to run high definition full-screen video. “I enjoy the challenge of making the most out of limited resources, and the BeagleBoard is a perfect platform for doing just that,” says Måns Rullgård, an embedded software consultant based in England. “It has the power to do really cool things if you get it right, while remaining small both in physical size and power consumption.” Rullgård and his project partners wanted to create “something spectacular” using the BeagleBoard and FFmpeg, open source multimedia libraries and programs. The resulting Videowall project uses six BeagleBoards, where each board plays a special file containing only the corresponding segment of the video. The files were created ahead of time on a PC. To synchronize the playback across the BeagleBoards, they are interconnected with a USB-based network. The video wall made its public debut in February in Brussels and it will be shown this week at the LinuxTag conference in Berlin. Photo: Måns Rullgård 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 9 Jun 2010 | 12:50 pm BeagleBoard Gives New Power to Open Source GadgetsA powerful chipset called Beagleboard gives open source hobbyists the same level of processing power found in the latest smartphones. Check out four cool projects that use it.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 9 Jun 2010 | 12:50 pm BeagleBoard Gives New Power to Open Source GadgetsA powerful chipset called Beagleboard gives open source hobbyists the same level of processing power found in the latest smartphones. Check out four cool projects that use it.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 12:50 pm Pagan Antiquities Unearthed in IsraelIsraeli archeologists have found a large cache of intact pagan vessels piled one atop the other in a natural hollow of bedrock in Tel Qashish, southeast of Haifa. Used by the ancient Canaanite people in a pagan cult that worshiped ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 12:09 pm Google’s free turn-by-turn Navigation launches in Canada, Germany, and 9 other countries
Hallo, Bonjour, Ciao, and Hallå! We’ve got good news for all of our European (and Canadian!) readers — or at least, those of you running an Android device on v1.6 or higher. If you’re in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, or Switzerland, go boot up the Android Market and grab the latest beta of Google maps. Why? Because you’ve got free turn-by-turn directions, now. Look Kids: Big Ben, Parliament!
In addition to the Navigation launch, Google has also just debuted Search by Voice functionality in French, German, Italian, and Spanish — but as with the English version, these ones are for Android 2.0-and-up only.
Source: MobileCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 11:41 am Oops! Sprint Says it Overstated HTC Evo Phone Sales
On Monday, right before Apple announced its next version of the iPhone, Sprint declared the HTC Evo 4G to be its best-selling device ever. Sprint said the Evo was such a big hit that just first day sales of the phone were three times higher than the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days combined. Sprint never released exact sales figures. Evo hit Sprint retail stores on June 4. Now the wireless carrier is admitting that some of those claims may be incorrect. “We inadvertently erred in the comparison,” says Sprint in a mea culpa note. “The total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on launch day was in line with the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined.” It’s an embarrassing gaffe for Sprint. The HTC Evo 4G, running Google’s Android operating system, is one of the strongest competitors to the iPhone. The feature-packed gadget has a huge 4.3-inch touchscreen, 1-GHz Snapdragon processor, a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video conferencing and a 8-megapixel camera for shooting photos and videos. It costs $200 with a two-year contract. An analyst with equity research firm BTIG estimates Sprint sold 150,000 Evos over the first weekend, down from his earlier forecast of 250,000 to 300,000 units, says Reuters. Sales of Evo have been plagued by shortages. Many potential customers have found that Sprint stores are out of Evo phones. Sprint has tried to spin as a sign of the phone’s desirability. But BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk says its more a result of Sprint not stocking up on enough inventory to fill demand. See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 9 Jun 2010 | 11:05 am Template for Life on Mars FoundA shallow spring in Canada holds a type of bacteria that could thrive on Mars.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 11:00 am Swiss solar innovator wins prize - BBC News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Jun 2010 | 10:49 am Could a $50 ‘Paperback’ Kindle Beat the iPad?
E-books are, in both price and size, still in their hardback stage. Author, blogger and all-round clever thinker Seth Godin thinks it’s time for a “paperback” e-reader, a cheap Kindle which would be completely bare bones but also put e-books into the hands of just about anyone who can read. Godin suggests that Amazon forget about a touchscreen and 3G connectivity and instead make a mass-market Paperback Kindle, a device so simple that it could be sold for just $50. Who wouldn’t buy that? Especially if it was made without that giant, ugly chin for the keyboard and instead was small enough to fit in a back pocket like a real paperback. In making this suggestion, Godin is seconding the opinion of e-book market experts who predicted, in a March 2010 Wired story, that the e-reader market would soon split into two segments: One for high-end e-readers with color screens and one for cheap e-readers with monochrome E Ink screens. There are some other great suggestions in Godin’s blog post (buy eight books, get a free Kindle, for instance) but it’s the idea of cheap hardware that seems to make so much sense. The Lady dropped and broke my Kindle last week, and $260 (plus international shipping and taxes, $350) is too much for a replacement. This effectively means I have lost all the books I bought, too. If the hardware cost $50 and was available in the corner store, I’d have gotten one right after the old Kindle died. Does this seem like wishful thinking? Maybe. But perhaps Amazon (or Sony, or anyone else in the e-reader market) has no choice. Godin:
There is one other alternative, and it actually isn’t so bad for Amazon, although it would mean the end for the Kindle as hardware. There is already one device which has sold a lot more than 20 million, and people replace it almost annually. It’s the cellphone. E-books will explode, but that doesn’t mean e-readers will necessarily be a success. If Amazon continues to make its Kindle app available on more and more cellphones, then it could still win. Paperback Kindle [Seth's Blog via Media Bistro] Photo: Charlie Sorrel See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:49 am Could a $50 'Paperback' Kindle Beat the iPad?It's time for Amazon to release a cheap, $50 "paperback" version of the Kindle, marketing guru Seth Godin argues.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:49 am Sun Powers Internet CafesA UK charity wants to harness the energy of the sun to power an entire Internet cafe.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:11 am Stolen Descartes Letter Returned to FranceA simple Google search ended a more than 150-year-old mystery.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:10 am Snake Populations Mysteriously PlummetScientists can't explain why 11 of 17 populations of snakes worldwide have dropped sharply over the past decade.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 9:09 am Bird Beats Humans, Breaks Its Own Record for Long-Distance FlightA bird has just broken its own world record for long-distance flight, beating out humans and all other animals.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:55 am American Concerns About Climate Change ClimbA new poll of Americans shows that support for revolutionary, carbon-cutting energy policies is strong, even though disagreement about the causes behind global warming lingers.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 9 Jun 2010 | 8:11 am Triangle, Circle, Square: Odd-Shaped Traffic-Light Concept
This cute concept traffic light, called the UNISignal, aims to avoid the dangers caused by colorblind drivers or foreigners who don’t know the local ways of the road. It does this by changing the shapes of the colored lights. Instead of using three circles, the red light is now a triangle and the green light is a square. The amber lamp remains round and central, just as it always was. But the only useful feature of this design may be that it makes the light look like a nice little birdhouse. It certainly isn’t going to make the signals any easier to recognize: Color blind drivers may mix up red and green, but they won’t mix up top and bottom (if they do, then there are likely bigger problems to worry about). If you have ever seen traffic lights move out of sequence, then you will be aware how profoundly unsettling it is. From these pictures, changing the shapes seem much less jarring. The other claim – that these lights will help to bring universal recognition – is undone by the pitch itself: “The shape of every single traffic light’s in the world are same as circle.” Exactly. The same the world over, which means that every visitor will be freaked out by these weird-shaped signals. Re-learning The Traffic lights [Yanko] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 9 Jun 2010 | 7:41 am Joby’s Gorillatorch Flare Puts On the Red Light
The ball-jointed tripod will wrap its limbs tightly around around any convenient protrusion or stick to metal (poles or otherwise) using the neodymnium magnets in its feet. Once suitably dangling, you can fire up the focussed 100 lumen white LED (up from the 65 lumens of the original) or choose the three red LEDs instead, depending the intentions you want to signal. The Flare is also drop and water resistant, so no matter how rough, hot or wet things get, you’ll still be able to see what you’re doing. It even runs on standard AA batteries (three of them) so if it starts to run out of steam, you can easily nab the cells from any other nearby battery-operated (ahem) appliances. The Flare will cost $35 or €35, depending on where in the world you are. Available now. Just leave the cash on the nightstand. Gorillatorch Flare [Joby. Thanks, Mark!] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 9 Jun 2010 | 7:10 am Video: Nexus One hacked to shoot 720p video
Currently, the only Android phone that can shoot in 720p is the battery-suckin’ behemoth, the EVO 4G. This isn’t something that the XDA Nexus One owners thought should be the case, so they’ve whipped up an update.zip for Cyanogen Mod 5.0.8 test3 and above that allows 720p video shooting in the (now modified) video camera app. The creator says that updates are coming soon that will give Froyo compatibility, as well as 480p video recording and improved audio and frame rate. You can witness the 8 seconds of glory in the sample video, embedded below. If you’re convinced this is for you, you should head on over to XDA to grab the necessary files. [via Engadget]
Source: MobileCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 6:55 am Video: BlackBerry 9670 clamshell and BB OS 6.0 demoed
Clocking in at a combined 12 minutes, Driphter have uploaded two videos of the new device, which I’ve embedded for you, below. First up is a 1m 33s “hardware review” which doesn’t really expose anything more than we’ve already seen. The narrator comments on the wasted space around the keyboard, but does say that the large 480 x 360 screen should make browsing “pleasant”. The second video is the juicy one, however, as it gives us the most in-depth look at the upcoming OS we’ve seen yet. That’s right, 10m 27s of BlackBerry OS 6.0. I don’t know what more you could want on a Wednesday morning. Personally, I watched it while listening to Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express/Abzug/Metal On Metal, and it made the 10 minutes fly by, but YMMV. The video points out that the 9670 will come with 512MB on-board storage, and also alludes that there may be some touch functionality in the phone, but the narrator speculates that it will likely only be on the front screen of the device. As if the idea of a chunky clamshell BlackBerry wasn’t crazy enough, they had to make the only touchscreen the front info display. Well done, guys. [via Gizmodo]
Source: MobileCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 6:15 am Lomo Spinner Puts 360-Degree Panoramas Onto Film
It’s also easy to use: Just like old-style talking action figures, you grab the ring and pull the cord. Hold it up above you and hit the button. The camera rotates on its handle and at the same time pulls the film through the camera, exposing it through a vertical slit. The rubber bands that drive the motion keep things synced so you end up with the whole world around you squeezed onto the gelatin strip. The Spinner 360º should be in stores any time now. It will fit up to eight panoramas onto a 36-exposure roll of film, and cost £115, or around $165. And if you already own a Lomo Diana and don’t mind cutting into its cheap plastic body, you could even try to make your own Spinner.
The Count Down Begins! Mystery Product Soon to be Revealed [Lomography] Lomography’s Spinner Camera Shoots 360 Panoramic Photos on Film [Giz] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 9 Jun 2010 | 6:09 am Video: SNES for iPad, Controlled by iPhoneI am an unashamed fanatic for Super Mario. To be more accurate, I love any Mario game from Super Mario 64 backwards, and my favorite video game ever is probably Super Mario World. The reason I stopped here? I got me a girlfriend. That’s why this latest SNES emulator for the iPad, SNES (HD), has gotten me so excited. You’ll need a Jailbroken iPad to run it, and a jailbroken iPhone to run the wireless controller software, but once you have satisfied those conditions you’ll have free access to pretty much any SNES game ever (via ROMs of games you already own of course).
Unlike the previous versions of SNES for iPad and iPhone by developer ZodTTD, SNES (HD) is free, and can be had in the Cydia repository (the jailbreak “app store”). Loading games into your library is a little clunky, involving manually copying into a rather deeply-buried directory, but once done you can browse and play from an in-app list. Then, making sure Bluetooth is switched on, you start to play, using your iPhone or iPad as a wireless controller. Up to four gamepads are supported, so multiplayer Super Bomberman sessions are a go. This app alone is probably worth jailbreaking your iPad for, especially as no amount of waiting will bring us official Nintendo games on Apple’s devices. The one thing missing is support for a USB joypad hooked up via the camera-connection kit. Given that it is still almost impossible to buy the Camera Connection Kit anyway, the developer has plenty of time to fix that. SNES (HD) [Where the Woozle Wasn't] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 9 Jun 2010 | 5:43 am Sony’s New Alpha SLRs Are Built to a Budget
Sony has birthed two new DSLRs, popping them out into the competitive entry-level market. The A290 and A390 will cost $500 and $600 when they ship next month, and are almost identical save for some subtleties. Both have a stabilized 14.2 Megapixel CCD sensor, both shoot up to ISO3200, and both share a relatively low-res 230,400 dot, 2.7-inch LCD screen. Then the differences begin. The screen on the A390 will also tilt and give you live view, while somehow using the faster phase-detection auto-focus normally reserved for DSLRs in regular viewfinder mode. Those optical viewfinders are slightly different, too. The cheaper A290 has a magnification of 0.83x, and the A390 0.74x (you’d expect that to be reversed) and both show 95% of the image area. Both these cameras look to be solid beginners models, and the extra $100 for the better screen is surely worth it. Those low-res screens are starting to look very dated, though: Even Sony’s new NEX mirrorless cameras offer almost four times as many dots, for not much more cash. Sony Alpha Cameras [Sony Style. Thanks, Lorena!] See Also: 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 9 Jun 2010 | 5:18 am Apple iPhone 4 Razzles and Dazzles - PC Magazine
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 9 Jun 2010 | 5:12 am Sprint “inadvertently overstated” launch day sales of the HTC EVO 4G Remember when Sprint said the total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on its launch day was three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined, last Monday?
Yeah, that didn't really happen.
The company now admits it had "inadvertently overstated" the launch day sales of the HTC phone, and that in reality it was in line with the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined. That makes a world of difference.
Source: MobileCrunch | 9 Jun 2010 | 4:27 am
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Obviously, companies copy one another’s ideas all the time. If something is working, sometime it just makes a lot of sense. But sometime it’s just a little pathetic. Tonight, we’re seeing a bit of that from Yelp.
A few days ago Google got slightly more Bing-ified when it started allowing users to 
On Monday, Apple officially unveiled the 
When 
The Palm Pixi Plus was first made available through AT&T on June 6 and it sold for $50. 
Let’s start things off with a disclaimer – I love Android phones. Last year I 
A perk of the Android OS is the ability to use Google’s free turn-by-turn app, known as Google Maps Navigation. Unfortunately, many people in Europe have not been able to take advantage of turn-by-turn directions on their Android phone, but Google released Google Maps Navigation 4.2 today in eleven different countries. The eleven countries include Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland. 
When driving, having a reliable and quality Bluetooth device is a necessary piece of technology in order to practice safe driving. The new Bluetooth device from Moshi connects with your cell phone, providing the driver with a hands-free solution to talking on the phone. With its superior voice commands, users can set speed dials, check battery, redial the last called number, and cancel a call. In fact, the phrase “Hello Moshi” will prompt 13 different possible voice commands. 
The buzzword is 
Finally, Sony has announced additions to its Blu-ray and home theater systems that handle 3D. The new 3D Blu-ray player is the BDP-S770 going for $300, and if you happened to have purchased either the BDP-S470 or the S570 in the past, then you can upgrade to the new firmware that supports 3D for free off Sony’s website. Available in July for $800 is the new BDV-HZ970W Blu-ray home theater system.
Well, this doesn’t bode well for Apple-AT&T relations…
According to Reuters, Sprint has issued a statement regarding the number of 4G EVO phones it had sold on it’s opening weekend. 
Should you ever crash your car into a strip-club, then the pole-dancing, red-light-shining new Gorillatorch Flare from Joby will be your perfect companion.
You really gotta love the peeps over at XDA. The latest in their long list of awesome achievements is a hack that brings the ability to shoot 720p video on the Nexus One.
While not the first 
Lomo just can’t stop inventing cheap, junky cameras that are just plain awesome. Here, for your retro-panoramic pleasure, is the Spinner 360º, a camera which will paint an entire 360-degree panorama onto a strip of 35mm film, pushing the image right over the sprocket-holes.
