|
|
|
|
Telstra in Aus$9.6 bln deal on broadband network (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Jun 2010 | 3:08 am Guest Post: It’s Game On For Location Based Services This ia a guest post by Justin Davies, founder of NinetyTen, a UK-based consultancy providing mobile community and location aware solutions to companies. Davies also founded the now defunct BuddyPing, an early mobile social networking community based on the realtime location of users, and thus has few opinions about the rise of Foursquare and others...
Not to sound too much like my grandad talking about the War, but when I was doing this, it was all about sending a text message to a person walking past Starbucks with a half price voucher.
Back in my day, we had to pay for location information, none of this “SimpleGeo” or “Google Latitude” malarkey you youngsters have these days.
The only phones that had a GPS chip was a prototype N95 I had to beg Nokia for, and some Blackberry phones.
Yes dear Location Based enthusiast, these are bright times, and this does finally seem to be the year of location (though, admittedly, this has been the case for the past 3 years).
Source: TechCrunch | 20 Jun 2010 | 3:03 am "Cumulative Voting" Method Gaining AttentionLocal ID10T writes "The AP reports on a system of voting, called 'cumulative voting,' which was just used under court order in Port Chester, NY. Under this system, voters can apportion their votes as they wish — all to one candidate, one to each candidate, or any combination. The system, which has been used in Alabama, Illinois, South Dakota, Texas, and New York, allows a political minority to gain representation if it organizes behind specific candidates. Courts are increasingly mandating cumulative voting when they deem it necessary to provide fair representation." Wikipedia notes that cumulative voting "was used to elect the Illinois House of Representatives from 1870 until its repeal in 1980," without saying why the system was abandoned.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 20 Jun 2010 | 2:59 am Elbit Systems to Supply a Latin American Army with Advanced Electronic Systems Valued at $130 MillionSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 20 Jun 2010 | 2:17 am Retro Feathered Hats - Beauty Magazine is All About Colorful Eyeshadows and Red Lips (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Beauty Magazine takes on the classic and timeless theme with its model Sofia Diliana. The wonderful pictures were taken from an artist in the name of PetOrly. I can't help but to be...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2010 | 2:01 am IT’S LIKE CHRISTMAS IN JUNE: iPhone 4 pre-orders begin shipping
EVERYBODY PANIC! Wait. No. What’s that other thing we use to open posts sometimes? Good news, everyone! Yeah. That’s the one. Good news, everyone! According to roughly 67 billion tips in our inbox, pre-ordered iPhone 4s have just started hitting delivery trucks around the country!
Source: CrunchGear | 20 Jun 2010 | 1:54 am iPhone 4 pre-orders begin shipping
EVERYBODY PANIC! Wait. No. What’s that other thing we use to open posts sometimes? Good news, everyone! Yeah. That’s the one. Good news, everyone! According to roughly 67 billion tips in our inbox, Pre-ordered iPhone 4s have just started hitting delivery trucks around the country!
If you pre-ordered, go ahead — go check if your status has changed. Don’t worry, we’ll wait. Actually, we won’t wait, because this is text and that is impossible. Before you get too excited: just because your device shipped today and you live eighteen feet from a FedEx depot doesn’t mean that you’re getting your iPhone 4 early. Apple tends to have tricks up their sleeves to keep these things locked down until the big day (sort of like Santa, wherein Santa is Steve Jobs. Sorry, kids, Steve Jobs isn’t real.) With that said, some do slip through the cracks from time to time, so don’t be too ashamed if you’ve got an urge to camp out on your stoop. We’ll be right there with you (except on our own stoop, not yours. You’re cool and all, we just really like our stoop.) First person to get their pre-order early gets.. uhh.. gets their iPhone 4 before everyone else! Hurray! [Thanks Scott B. and everyone else!]
Source: MobileCrunch | 20 Jun 2010 | 1:51 am Disco Ball Chandeliers - The Schierle House by Matthias Benz is One Funky Home (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The Schierle House by Matthias Benz has its own disco room for you to get your groove on. Yes, now you can have an eco-friendly home while dancing like no one's watching. This house...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2010 | 1:41 am Turtle Shell Knapsacks - Be the Coolest Kid at School With the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Backpack (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Once back to school season rolls around, I highly suggest the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpack for your child. Not only will it keep your child's school supplies from falling everywhere,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2010 | 1:11 am Cubist Canine Coifs - These Insane Poodle Haircuts Will Have You Scratching Your Head (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) I understand that owners love their poodles but some owners take it to the extreme with these crazy poodle haircuts. As a puppy lover, I've seen different haircuts on poodles, but never...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2010 | 12:51 am Happy Father's Day! As Groucho Marx once sang, "Today, father, is Father's Day, and we're giving you a tie." In that spirit, I'd like to wish the very happiest of Father's Days to all the dads out there, especially my wonderful dad, Gord Doctorow (shown here in Algonquin Park with me, aged 6 months), and my brother Neil, my brother-in-law Robbie, Rusty, my uncles, David and Mark, and all the other pops in the world. I'm having a great day! It started with breakfast in bed, a new watch and three cards, and now we're off for brunch, a swim, and massages!
Groucho Marx sings "Father's Day", from An Evening With Groucho Happy Father's Day!As Groucho Marx once sang, "Today, father, is Father's Day, and we're giving you a tie." In that spirit, I'd like to wish the very happiest of Father's Days to all the dads out there, especially my...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2010 | 12:33 am Fashionable Zombie Gear - Best Made Co Axe Sling Lets You Fight the Dead and Cut Wood (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) It's about time that zombie hunting was made cool and fashionable, which is exactly what the Best Made Co Axe Sling is all about. Now you can go fight zombies and horrible monsters...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2010 | 12:20 am Wikileaks: a somewhat less redacted version of the Lamo/Manning logsPhoto: Film Noir by Jasohill under CC. Illo: Rob Beschizza. We just received this from a source requesting anonymity. It purports to be a more complete transcript of a portion of Army intelligence analyst...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2010 | 12:15 am Wikileaks: a somewhat less redacted version of the Lamo/Manning logs
We just received this from a source requesting anonymity. It purports to be a more complete transcript of a portion of Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning's conversation with Adrian Lamo, the hacker who reported Manning to authorities. Released in part by Wired News, and excerpted in part in a Washington Post story, the remainder was said to contain information of potential national security import. However, we don't see material of that nature in the portion of the transcript we were sent here, and neither can our lawyers. Update: We have removed a few words regarding specifics of personal issues not directly related to the whistleblowing/national security concerns at hand. Some of the sections which, as far as I can tell, haven't been published in "raw" form are in bold.
There's a reference here to "confession" on Manning's part. Glenn Greenwald wrote in his Salon piece published yesterday: Lamo told me (though it doesn't appear in the chat logs published by Wired) that he told Manning early on that he was a journalist and thus could offer him confidentiality for everything they discussed under California's shield law. Lamo also said he told Manning that he was an ordained minister and could treat Manning's talk as a confession, which would then compel Lamo under the law to keep their discussions confidential (early on in their chats, Manning said: "I can't believe what I'm confessing to you"). In sum, Lamo explicitly led Manning to believe he could trust him and that their discussions would be confidential -- perhaps legally required to be kept confidential -- only to then report everything Manning said to the Government.
Transcript of the alleged log between Lamo and Manning as sent to Wikileaks by Lamo. The transcript is clearly only a small portion and has presumably been edited. (12:15:11 PM) bradass87: hypothetical question: if you had free reign over  Source: Boing Boing | 20 Jun 2010 | 12:15 am Infrared treesHere's a little gallery of trees shot with in infrared -- anything warm and alive shows up as a ghostly white. Beautiful Photos of Infrared Trees Infrared LEDs make you invisible to CCTV cameras The...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 20 Jun 2010 | 12:09 am Infrared trees Here's a little gallery of trees shot with in infrared -- anything warm and alive shows up as a ghostly white. Beautiful Photos of Infrared Trees Source: Boing Boing | 20 Jun 2010 | 12:09 am Telstra strikes $10B deal for Australia broadband (AP)AP - The government and Australia's largest telecommunications company announced a deal Sunday that clears a major hurdle to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's plans for a superfast national broadband network.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:52 pm Top 20 Trends of the Day (Jun 19) - From Pee Dance Photoblogs to Rigid Model Editorials (COUNTDOWN)(TrendHunter.com) For the day of June 19th, these are the Top 20 trends, which include Pee Dance Photoblogs, Pull-Up Tees and Leg-Loving Pictorials. The rankings are based on hundreds of thousands of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:50 pm UK's RIAA Goes After Google Using the US DMCAAn anonymous reader passes along a DMCA takedown notice directed at Google and authored by the British Phonographic Industry, Britain's equivalent of the RIAA. P2pnet identifies the BPI as the outfit that "contributed to the British government's Digital Ecomy bill, complete with its ACTA Three Strikes and you're Off The Net element, with hardly a murmur from the UK lamescream media." Are there any precedents for a UK trade organization attempting to use an American law to force an American company to take down links to UK-copyrighted material?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:48 pm 15 Moccasin-Inspired Shoes - From Boho Celebrity Shoes to Native American Skate Shoes (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) Classic leather moccasins have long hit the soles of mainstream fashion culture, and of course no footwear trend would be complete without its spin-offs. From boat shoes for landlubbers...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:20 pm Whales closer to us than thought, say scientistsAs the future of whales once more comes under global debate, some scientists say the marine mammals are not only smarter than thought but also share several attributes once claimed as...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 9:43 pm FXCM MENA Launches New Arabic & English WebsiteBEIRUT, Lebanon, June 20, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- In 2009, FXCM products became exclusively available in the Middle East and North Africa region through Master Capital Group SAL ("FXCM MENA"). As of June 1, 2010, FXCM MENA is happy to announce the launch of its new website http://www.fxcmmena.com, in both Arabic and English. Designed and built by online marketing professionals, FXCM MENA's website caters to currency and commodity traders in the region. You can visit http://www.fxcmmena.com to find out about the company, expand your knowledge about forex trading, learn about FXCM's platforms and services and get live feeds from FXCM's research and analysis website, DailyFX (http://www.dailyfx.com/). Moreover, FXCM MENA is happy to offer new traders in the region an Education Section on its website.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Jun 2010 | 9:28 pm Sekimia's "Mindset": Embrace the Thinking of the Board and of Your Senior ManagementSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 8:58 pm Sekimia's "Mindset": Embrace the Thinking of the Board and of Your Senior ManagementBEIRUT, Lebanon, June 20, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Sekimia enhanced its demonstration capabilities by introducing its "Mindset" framework. As portrayed, the "Mindset" section is the "Grammar" pertaining to the "Language" Sekimia's mantra is advocating.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Jun 2010 | 8:58 pm Potato-Powered Batteries DebutMojoKid writes "Yissum Research Development Company Ltd., the technology transfer arm of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has just introduced what they're calling 'solid organic electric battery based upon treated potatoes.' In short, it's a potato-powered battery, and it's as real as you're hoping it is. The simple, sustainable, robust device can potentially provide an immediate inexpensive solution to electricity needs in parts of the world lacking electrical infrastructure. Researchers at the Hebrew University discovered that the enhanced salt bridge capability of treated potato tubers can generate electricity through means readily available in developing nations."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Jun 2010 | 8:46 pm Facebook For iPhone Updated: No iOS 4 Support, No iPad Support, Broken UI
Everyone already knows that the Facebook Android app sucks. The iPhone app, though, thanks largely to version 3, has remained a bright spot. But while some people are gushing today over the latest iPhone update (3.1.3, the first update in a while), I’m not one of those people. First of all, Facebook still has yet to release a native iPad app. This is pretty ridiculous considering that undoubtedly a high percentage of the millions of iPad owners have searched the App Store for a Facebook app, and come away with only imitations (which Facebook has demanded be taken down). As I noted above, the original Facebook app for iPhone launched alongside the App Store itself. We’re now almost 3 months post-iPad launch, and there is absolutely no word about when we can expect an iPad app. Second, while many of the best iPhone app developers have been hustling to get their apps iOS 4-ready (the new iPhone OS launching on Monday), and plenty already have iOS 4 apps in the App Store, this update brings nothing in that department from Facebook. They couldn’t even bother to turn on fast app switching (the most basic iOS 4 multitasking feature) if they were going to update their app anyway? Third, this update has at least one glaring UI bug. Sure, bugs are a part of the game, but how Facebook overlooked this one is dumbfounding. If you have new messages or friend requests on Facebook, load up the main screen in the app. There you’ll find certain areas badged to let you know there are updates for you to see — but these badges have a dark upper area that clashes badly with the light background of the main screen. I mean, it just looks awful. How did that get through quality control? Meanwhile, as I said, plenty of folks are gushing over the things Facebook did add with this update. The ability (finally) to be able to see and write on event walls is definitely nice. But the big addition is the ability to view videos in the app. The only problem? It’s really hard to actually find any videos to view. While Facebook has an area on everyone’s profile for pictures, videos are nowhere to be found. You’d think if they were going to do a video-centric update to the app, they’d make a new area for these videos to highlight the feature they added — but no. So you’ll forgive me if I let out a big sigh upon seeing this Facebook update. Ever since developer Joe Hewitt walked away from the project (over his disgust for some App Store policies) last November, things have gone downhill. And that trend, sadly, continues — even though Facebook promised it wouldn’t. Small updates may be fine or even welcomed by other companies — but Facebook used to lead the way in iPhone development. Now they’re second-rate. There are some 55 million monthly active users of Facebook for iPhone, according to Inside Facebook. They deserve more commitment to this platform (as do the Facebook Android users). Find the updated iPhone app here.      
Source: TechCrunch | 19 Jun 2010 | 7:24 pm The Digital Maps of Juan Manuel Santos Facilitate Electronic Democracy in ColombiaThe Web 2.0 Team of Juan Manuel Santos introduces a new service on their website, with the goal of empowering the voters of Colombia with easy to use technology to locate voting locations.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:56 pm The Digital Maps of Juan Manuel Santos Facilitate Electronic Democracy in ColombiaSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:56 pm MobileMe May Find Its Niche in Small Business - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:20 pm Turning Attackers' Tools Against ThemTasha26 writes "The BBC has an interesting Web security snippet from the SyScan 2010 security conference in Singapore. In a presentation, security researcher Laurent Oudot released details of bugs found in commonly used attack kits such as Neon, Eleonore, and Sniper. These loopholes could be exploited to get more information about the attackers, perhaps identifying them, stealing their tools and methods, or even following the trail back to their own computer."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:19 pm The Smart Hostess
A friend cleaned out the attic, and found this delightful constellation of antique items.Source: Boing Boing | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:05 pm Can You Really Trust Facebook? (PC World)PC World - Responding to yet another user uproar, Facebook recently made efforts to simplify its privacy controls and introduce some other welcome changes. They're good steps to take--but considering that Facebook had to be forced to respect users' basic wishes regarding their own information, it suggests a serious disconnect in how the company and its users view privacy.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:00 pm Facebook Movie Poster Announces 500 Million Facebook Users Before Facebook Does
The poster, which features a close-up of actor Jesse Eisenberg (who is playing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg), features the tag-line “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.” Intriguing — but is it accurate? The latest numbers on Facebook’s press site say the network has “more than 400 million active users” — this echoes what Zuckerberg said in a post in February. In late May, that number was pegged at 450 million, but third-party statistics suggest it was already closer to 500 million. Also in May, All Facebook reported that the social network was working on plans to celebrate their 500 millionth user — and suggested an announcement should come before June 25 (next week). But still, no official word from the company. It’s kind of silly if the marketing for a movie makes the number “official” before Facebook itself does. The movie poster even points people to the URL 500millionfriends.com (which redirects to thesocialnetwork-movie.com — the official site). Still the film’s marketers are likely just playing the odds — the movie is slated to be released October 1, 2010 in the U.S., and Facebook will undoubtedly be far past the 500 million users mark at that point (and maybe even closer to 600 million users). I’ve heard in recent weeks from two good sources that Facebook is past 500 million users now, even if they’re not publicly saying it. You can probably expect them to shortly. A few other interesting tidbits about the poster: 1) It makes use of the UI of the most recent Facebook top toolbar (though the icons are slightly different — and obviously the search box wouldn’t normally be used to input a URL). 2) It appears to be running Firefox (judging from the tab bar). 3) It’s definitely running on a Mac (you can tell by the scroll bar at the bottom). [thanks Christopher] Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:43 pm The Best iOS 4-Ready Apps So Far
The component that all of these apps share is the ability to do fast app switching. What you may traditionally think of as multitasking isn’t the same on iOS 4. Multiple apps aren’t running all of their functions in the background at once — obviously, this would take up resources and eat up battery life. Instead, Apple allows third-party apps to do certain functions in the background now, as well as create an easy way for all apps to save their states to enable this fast app switching. Basically, these apps get paused, put in the background, then un-paused when you come back to them. That may sound a little lame, but the effect is actually quite nice and will end up saving users a lot of time if all app makers implement it. Here’s a list of some of the best iOS 4-ready apps so far. First, the ones that are out now: Evernote — The latest version (3.3.5) brings some pretty solid iOS 4 support. This means not only does it offer fast app switching, but it also uses some of the more advanced background APIs. For example, you can both download and upload notes while the app isn’t currently open. Even cooler is that if you start recording an audio note and then leave the app, it will keep recording. A big red bar along the top of the iPhone will let you know that this action is still taking place, and clicking it will take you back into the Evernote app. The Evernote blog has more on it. You can find the free app here. Dropbox — The latest version of Dropbox (1.2.2) also support fast app switching. It also seems to support uploading/syncing in the background, though this isn’t in the notes for the latest version. You can find the free app here. Zagat To Go — The latest version (3.1.2) has fast app switching but also the new ability to add events to your iPhone Calendars (this is another new API). Also nice is that Zagat says it has updated the graphics of its app to be ready for the iPhone 4′s new high resolution screen. You can find Zagat To Go in the App Store here — it’s $9.99. LinkedIn — The latest version of this app (3.1.1) only seems to support the fast app switching for the moment, but seeing as this is a very popular app important to a lot of users, it’s good to see them implement this so early. It’s great to be able to start typing a status message, leave to go find something on the web, then come back to the LinkedIn app and it’s still exactly where you left off. You can find it here for free. Next, the iOS 4 apps coming soon: Loopt — I got a chance to see a build of Loopt for iOS 4 that offers both fast app switching and location running in the background (another new API of iOS 4). It’s really impressive (and the app itself has a much nicer, completely new main UI). I noted last week that iOS 4 is going to up the ante for some of these location-based startups, and seeing this in action reaffirms those beliefs. The new Loopt is still check-in based, but with background location, it can now tell when you leave a place (and more importantly, let your friends know). Look for more information on this shortly and for the app itself sometime around the iOS 4 launch. Pandora — I can only assume the iOS 4-ready version of Pandora will be launching soon considering that Apple had it installed on all of the demo units at WWDC (here’s a video of me playing with it). I can already say that at least on my iPhone, Pandroa will benefit the most from iOS 4 because its music can now play in the background while you’re doing other things. Twitterrific 3 — Developer Craig Hockenberry tweeted a few days ago that it the iOS 4 (and iPhone 4)- ready version (version 3) of the app has been submitted to the App Store already and should be out soon. Having a Twitter app that can be quickly switched into and out of will be pretty vital. Navigon — Another key new use of the background location API will be for turn-by-turn navigation systems. Navigon recently showed off a version of their app that is iOS 4-ready and they plan to submit to the App Store soon. Foursquare — This is a bit of a wildcard, because in an interview we published today, co-founder Dennis Crowley makes it seem as if Foursquare is taking the wait-and-see approach to iOS 4 and background location. But at the WWDC iPhone 4 hands-on, Foursquare was installed on the demo units, and fast app switching was working on it. So perhaps that will be ready to go early, but Foursquare will evaluate whether or not to do something with location in the background. So that’s the list so far. Anyone know of/have seen any others? Feel free to ping us or leave them in the comments. A few quick notes: I know Facebook’s app was just updated today, but that doesn’t appear to have anything iOS 4-specific in it. Both Fandango and Boxcar say they’re iOS 4-ready, but neither appear to even support fast app switching, so if they’re doing something else with the new APIs, I’m missing it. Update: Here’s a few more via the comments: How To Cook Everything — It brings fast app switching, local notifications, gesture support, calendar support — and updated graphics for iPhone 4. This may be the most robust iOS 4 app overall! Find it here, the app is $1.99. NYTimes — The paper’s app support fast app switching. You can find the free app here. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:14 pm After Making History, Ubiquity Broadcasting Corporation Waits Out the Big Waves to Showcase Its Ground-Breaking Technology Again, Next Week, While Broadcasting Day 2 of the Sponsor Me Ala Moana Bowls Contest Live in HD on all Three Screens (the Internet,SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO, Calif., June 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Ubiquity Broadcasting Corporation will make history again when day 2 of the 2010 Sponsor Me Ala Moana Bowls Contest resumes early next week.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:01 pm After Making History, Ubiquity Broadcasting Corporation Waits Out the Big Waves to Showcase Its Ground-Breaking Technology Again, Next Week, While Broadcasting Day 2 of the Sponsor Me Ala Moana Bowls Contest...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:01 pm Google Builds a Native PDF Reader Into ChromeAn anonymous reader writes "Google's latest Chrome 6 Developer Update comes with a few subtle GUI changes, but there is also a major update under the hood. As its ties with Adobe quite apparently grow stronger, there is not just an integrated Flash player, but also a native PDF reader in the latest version of Chrome 6. Google says the native reader will allow users to interact with PDF files just like they do with regular HTML pages. The reader is included in Chrome versions (Chromium) 6.0.437.1 and higher, and you can use the feature after you have enabled it manually in the plug-ins menu. That is, of course, if you can keep Chrome 6 alive — Windows users have reported frequent crashes, and Google has temporarily suspended the update progress to find out what is going on." The Register has some more details on the PDF plugin and a link to Google's blog post about it.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Jun 2010 | 3:54 pm Argentines lift 3-year roadblock over Finnish paper millArgentine protesters Saturday lifted a three-year-old roadblock on a bridge to Uruguay to give a Finnish paper mill time to prove it's not polluting the river. As cars began crossing theSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 3:06 pm Brazil to help phone firm Oi avoid buyout-reportRIO DE JANEIRO, June 19 (Reuters) - Brazilian phone group Oi has won the support of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to prevent a possible buyout attempt by Portugal Telecom, local media reported on...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 2:49 pm Apple Quietly Goes After Mac Trojan With UpdateTh'Inquisitor was one of several readers to point out coverage of Apple's stealth security fix, included along with the recent Snow Leopard 10.6.4 update. Graham Cluley of Sophos first noticed the update to protect Mac computers from a Trojan, and the fact that Apple didn't mention it in the release notes. The malware opens a back door to a Mac that can allow attackers to gain control of the machine and snoop about on it or turn it into a zombie. "You have to wonder," writes Cluley, "whether their keeping quiet about an anti-malware security update like this was for marketing reasons." While he certainly has a point that Apple benefits by its users' belief that the platform is secure, you also have to wonder whether any such publicity from a security company has a marketing subtext, as well.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Jun 2010 | 2:46 pm Report: Facebook '09 revenues as high as $800 M - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 19 Jun 2010 | 2:20 pm Iowa museum alters Gulf exhibit for oil spill - Chicago Tribune
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 19 Jun 2010 | 2:02 pm Colombians turn to Facebook in final vote pushBOGOTA (Reuters) - Supporters of the two candidates in Colombia's presidential run-off flooded the Internet on Saturday with urgent appeals for voters to cast ballots in an election that...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 2:01 pm Getty's Flickr Sales, Money Spinner Or Ripoff?Barence writes "Photo-sharing site Flickr is offering photographers a new way to cash in on their work. The 'Request to License' scheme allows renowned photo agency Getty to sell photos on behalf of Flickr members. Once part of the scheme, all of the user's photos will carry a Request to License link (users can't select certain photos to license in this way). People wishing to buy the photos are directed to Getty's staff, who 'will help handle details like permissions, releases, and pricing,' according to Flickr. However, the last time Getty sold images on behalf of Flickr members, it led to complaints that photographers were being exploited, with commission on photos as low as $1. So who's doing best out of the deal, photographers or Getty?"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Jun 2010 | 1:37 pm Foursquare CEO Crowley On Fundraising: “You Don’t Have To Rush Through It” (Video)On Friday, I dropped by Foursquare HQ in New York City. They showed me some stickers, and I got to sit down for a few minutes with CEO Dennis Crowley. In the video interview above, he describes his fundraising philosophy (at about the 4:00 mark), which is timely coming from the founder of a hot startup everybody wants to invest in or acquire:
Crowley also talks about Foursquare’s plans to give local merchants and brands more self-serve options for managing their venues and offers. “The sooner we can get those self-service systems in place, the better it will be for revenue.” He says that for businesses, Foursquare is building two different products: one for local shops, and another for national brands and media companies. There are only 25 people working at Foursquare, and most of them are “building things,” not “answering phones.” So the self-serve products are a big priorioty. On whether Foursquare will take advantage of the iPhone’s new background processing in iOS 4, he says he is excited about that possibility but, like everyone else, is waiting to get his hands on a new iPhone so that his engineers can test it out. He supports the idea of an open places database which all location services can contribute. But it is not until the very end of the interview that Crowley reveals his deepest secret of all: “I only have two mayorships left.”      
Source: TechCrunch | 19 Jun 2010 | 1:34 pm Why Google's Wi-Fi Payload Collection Was InadvertentReader Lauren Weinstein found a blog post that gives a good, fairly technical explanation of why Google's collection of Wi-Fi payload data was incidental, and why it's easy to collect Wi-Fi payload data accidentally in the course of mapping Wi-Fi access points. "Although some people are suspicious of their explanation, Google is almost certainly telling the truth when it claims it was an accident. The technology for Wi-Fi scanning means it's easy to inadvertently capture too much information, and be unaware of it. ... It's really easy to protect your data: simply turn on WPA. This completely stops Google (or anybody else) from spying on your private data. ... Laws against this won't stop the bad guys (hackers). They will only unfairly punish good guys (like Google) whenever they make a mistake. ... [A]nybody who has experience in Wi-Fi mapping would believe Google. Data packets help Google find more access-points and triangulate them, yet the payload of the packets do nothing useful for Google because they are only fragments."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Jun 2010 | 12:32 pm Appbistro Lands Wildfire For Its Facebook App Market
Wildfire offers a platform for running marketing campaigns simultaneously on Twitter and Facebook. The company was part of Facebook’s fbFund twice, and has many large clients including Pepsi, Red Bull, Victoria’s Secret, plenty of small businesses, and everything in between. Through Appbistro, Wildfire is now offering five tab applications, including tabs for contests, coupons, and quizzes. As with all its developer partners, Appbistro does a 30/70% revenue split in the developer’s favor. This is definitely a win for Appbistro — the more high quality applications it offers, the easier it will be to get the attention of the millions of small businesses (and larger brands) looking to build out their Facebook Pages. Appbistro needs that audience in order to appeal to application developers in the first place, and this is a good step toward beating the chicken-and-egg problem.
     
Source: TechCrunch | 19 Jun 2010 | 12:24 pm Verizon considering tiered data plansSection: Communications, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
Verizon’s CEO told Businessweek that the company is considering a move in the same direction as AT&T and dropping unlimited 3G data in favor of tiered data plans. There was no mention of what the pricing structure might be. Verizon has already said they will offer their 4G service under a tiered pricing plan. Should they go ahead with their plans to do the same with their 3G service, it would leave Sprint as the main provider of unlimited data, which could be a very good position for the struggling company to find themselves in. Read [PCWorld] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 19 Jun 2010 | 12:03 pm FCC Takes First Step Toward Regulating Broadband - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 19 Jun 2010 | 12:00 pm UPDATE 4-Russia, Belarus gas talks fail, cut-off looms* Has spare capacity to maintain supplies too rest of EuropeSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:45 am App Development 101: What is the difference between developing a website and developing an app? (Appolicious)Appolicious - Many people enter into having an app developed with having a web site developed as their only frame of reference. Although the two look similar, and it seems the pricing and development process should be alike, they are very different both in method and cost for several reasons. In the inaugural edition of our App Development 101 series, Rachel Youens of Appiction explains the development differences for each platform.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:33 am SpaceX Falcon 9 Relatively Cheap Compared To NASA's New PadAn anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Motherboard.tv: "As debate over the future of spaceflight rages on — and as the axe all but falls on NASA's mission back to the moon and beyond — the successful launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9 two weeks ago proved at least one of the virtues of the private option: it's a heckuva lot cheaper than government-funded rides to space. In fact, the whole system was built for less than the cost of the service tower that was to be used for NASA's proposed future spaceflight vehicle (yup, the service tower is finished, but the rocket isn't, and the whole program may well be canceled anyway)." CEO Elon Musk spoke recently about some of the ways SpaceX finds to cut costs in the construction of their rockets.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:27 am Texting While Driving More Common Among Adults Than Teens - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:25 am Texting While Driving More Common Among Adults Than Teens (PC World)PC World - Adults are guilty of the dangerous activity of texting while driving more often than teenagers, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. The Pew study also revealed that adults are substantially more likely to talk on a cell phone while driving than teenagers.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:24 am Stopping Desertification in Africa With a 'Great Green Wall'To halt encroaching desertification, a group of African nations wants to plant a "Great Green Wall" of trees extending from Senegal to Ethiopia.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:20 am Scribd’s Decision To Dump Flash Pays Off, User Engagement TriplesYou could call it the perfect storm. Over the last few months, user engagement on Scribd has surged, according to CEO Trip Adler, thanks to its transition to HTML5, the introduction of the iPad, and Scribd’s Facebook integration. Of these three factors, Adler says the conversion from Flash to HTML5 was by far the greatest driver for his document sharing company. According to Scribd’s numbers, time on the site has tripled in the last three months. In early May, Scribd announced its plans to ditch Adobe’s Flash and began the arduous process of converting every document (of its “tens of millions”) to native, HTML5 pages. “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash, “co-founder and CTO, Jared Friedman, told Erick Schonfeld. Although many documents on the web are still boxed into Flash players, the HTML5 format turns them into rich, interactive web pages. That gamble has paid off handsomely for Scribd. Although the number of unique visitors still stands at roughly 50 million per month, those users are spending significantly more time perusing documents and sharing with friends.That growth in user engagement has rapidly accelerated in the past month. On May 25, at TechCrunch Disrupt, Friedman said user engagement had doubled— implying strong acceleration in the last three weeks. The HTML5 play has also made Scribd’s product very iPad friendly and iPad users are responding in kind. According to Adler, although iPhones clearly outnumber iPads in the wild by a large margin, the number of users accessing Scribd through the iPad is now roughly equivalent with the number of users who are using their iPhone. Now that the company has its HTML5 and iPad strategy in place, Adler says they are focusing on making Scribd more social and less reliant on search engines. Today, the majority of their traffic comes from Google, but Scribd is putting a greater emphasis on the social by closely integrating with Facebook. Earlier this year, Scribd revamped its Facebook Connect option (enhanced content sharing and added an activity feed plug-in) and introduced Readcasting, which automatically tells your social networks, like Twitter and Facebook what you’re reading. According to Adler, those initiatives are growing: the number of people who are auto-Readcasting is increasing by roughly 10% each day and daily subscriptions to other users is up 15x (in the last three months). Quick video with Adler above. Information provided by CrunchBase      
Source: TechCrunch | 19 Jun 2010 | 11:13 am Fear and Loathing at E3: Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 19 Jun 2010 | 10:43 am The Poor, Pilloried, Tech IPO
A decade ago, tech IPOs ruled the stock markets and Silicon Valley. They were the end-all and be-all for ambitious entrepreneurs and venture capitalists looking to become instant billionaires, or at least millionaires. That was many booms and busts ago. The IPO market never came back, and the multiple financial meltdowns which brought on Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulations made going public even less appealing to shoot-from-the-hip entrepreneurs. The founders of the most successful tech companies today—Facebook, Skype, LinkedIn—are pushing off the inevitable IPO for as long as possible. And for smaller tech companies, IPOs seem hardly worth the bother. And those companies which are going public simply are not the cream of the crop. IPO returns across all sectors this year are down 3 percent, according to Renaissance Capital. And over the past three years, IPO returns are basically tracking the S&P 500, which hardly justifies the added risk of investing in them.
Even venture capitalists are souring on IPOs. In a post this morning titled “IPOs Just Aren’t What They Used To Be,” Fred Wilson laments:
Wilson shares two anecdotes. One was of a startup which prepared to go public, but couldn’t and was still stuck with a $3.5 million bill it couldn’t afford. The other was of a “successful” tech IPO which raised $75 million, but gave the company a lower valuation than it might have gotten in a “late stage private financing.” (He doesn’t name either company). In his opinion, “only the very best companies” should attempt an IPO: The exit of choice for most startups, he suggests, is selling to a larger company. And that describes exactly the market today, where the best possible exit for most startups is to be acquired by Google, Microsoft, or (more recently) Apple. And instead of going public, the best tech startups like Facebook, Zynga, and Groupn are getting early payouts for founders and employees via late-stage, private DST-type financings. But limiting exits to M&A might not be the best thing for venture returns. At TechCrunch Disrupt, technology banker Frank Quattrone argued: “For the VC market to produce above average returns you need there to be an IPO market.” An important part of venture returns come from holding onto some shares after an IPO and riding the public markets a while. “If you lose those longtail returns you lose a lot of the returns,” he concluded. Quattrone seems to think this problem will be solved when the new standard bearers of the Web decide to go public, as opposed to the lackluster offerings so far:
I’m not sure a few iconic IPOs will bring back the Netscape years. First of all, it might still be a couple years before we see a Facebook IPO, and even longer for a Twitter IPO. But even if and when those kinds of tech companies do go public, the IPO option for lesser startups will remain limited for the reasons Wilson outlines. Unless, of course, a Facebook IPO makes public investors irrational once again and we get another bubble. But nobody wants that, or do they?      
Source: TechCrunch | 19 Jun 2010 | 10:34 am Struggling To Bridge the Casual-Hardcore Game GapWith the advent of the Wii and the upcoming motion control systems from Sony and Microsoft, console makers are expanding the gaming population to include vast numbers of casual players. Their problem now, according to this editorial at Eurogamer, is that there doesn't exist a broad selection of games between the simple, introductory titles and the complex, hardcore ones, which tends to limit how deep new players will venture into the gaming ecosystem. Quoting: "... it needs software that spans the gap between the two camps of offerings which are emerging on Xbox 360 — games that encourage players of Dance Central or Your Shape to move upstream and explore. It's unlikely, perhaps, that they'll ever end up curb-stomping crinkle-faced nasties in Cliff Bleszinski's latest, but we're a long way past the point of the Xbox being all about shooting and driving, even if the public perception hasn't quite moved with the software line-up. The long-term challenge for the games market must, ultimately, be to emulate the success which other mediums have had in creating markets where consumers routinely and happily move between genres, and where franchises which would be pigeonholed as 'hardcore' in the games world nestle comfortably in people's DVD collections alongside those which would be dismissed as 'casual.'"
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 19 Jun 2010 | 10:19 am Bailed-out banker praises capitalism, attacks parasitesMatt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist is about mankind's long-term ability to make things better, not worse. Sounds great! But it's also got some stuff attacking wealth-redistributing bureaucratic parasites who stifle businesses by intervening in free markets. This is interesting because Ridley is the discredited Northern Rock chairman whose company received a $40bn state bailout after the company's near-collapse and the first run on a British bank since the Victorian era. [Guardian] Source: Boing Boing | 19 Jun 2010 | 10:15 am E3 2010: Nintendo 3DS game card looks familiarFROM GAMERTELL - The 3DS cartridge is almost identical to DSi cartridges. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 19 Jun 2010 | 9:47 am Restaurant sign features animal mascot being burned alive
Artist Mitch O'Connell writes, "Now that I've seen it, I'm slapping my forehead that it hasn't been done before! ALL cute animal mascots should be shown burning alive. It's just common sense!"
Fear and loathing at E3: Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - âÂÂWe canâÂÂt stop here, this is nerd country,â I told the taxi driver as we sped off, leaving behind a group of angry French game developers whose cab I had just snaked.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Jun 2010 | 9:00 am Palm to webOS users: “Nearly all” App Catalog app are 50% offSection: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile
The message was delivered by way of the official Twitter account for Palm and simply read;
Of course they also included a link to a post with some more details. Otherwise, the offer is effective as of now and will be in place until July 9th. That and, this is valid only for those in the US market. Read [Palm Blog] Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 19 Jun 2010 | 8:36 am A Guide To 3D Display Technology: Its Principles, Methods, And Dangers
But 3D isn’t as easy to get used to as, say, getting a surround-sound system or moving from 4:3 to widescreen. Why is that? Well, it’s complicated, but worth taking the time to understand. Moreover, like any other new technology, 3D is not without its potential risks, and of course studies will have to be done to determine the long-term effects of usage, if any. For now, though, it must be sufficient to inform yourself of the principles behind it and make your own decision.      
Source: TechCrunch | 19 Jun 2010 | 8:31 am A guide to 3D display technology: its principles, methods, and dangers
But 3D isn’t as easy to get used to as, say, getting a surround-sound system or moving from 4:3 to widescreen. Why is that? Well, it’s complicated, but worth taking the time to understand. Moreover, like any other new technology, 3D is not without its potential risks, and of course studies will have to be done to determine the long-term effects of usage, if any. For now, though, it must be sufficient to inform yourself of the principles behind it and make your own decision. Let’s just have a primer in case you’re not familiar with how 3D works in general. There are a few major points worth keeping in mind. We’ll start with the basics. How do you see in 3D to begin with? Here’s a crash course on your visual system. How depth is determined in your visual systemEven if it feels silly, just indulge me here: close just your right eye. Now just your left. Now your right. It’s like in Wayne’s World: camera one, camera two. You must have noticed that things change position a bit. This, of course, is because your eyes are a few inches apart; this is called the “interocular distance” and it varies from person to person. Note also that when you look at something close, objects appear in double in the background. Look at the corner of the screen. See how the chair or window back there is doubled? It’s because you’re actually rotating your eyes so they both point directly at what you’re focusing on. This is called “convergence,” and it creates a sort of X, the center of the X being what’s being focused on. You’ve probably seen a diagram like this one before:
So the objects at the center of the X are aligned at the same points on your respective retinas, but because of the interocular, that means that things in front and behind of that X are going to hit different points on those retinas — resulting in a double image. You can see through the double image because what’s blocked for one eye is seen by the other, though from a slightly different point of view. Experimenting with this always gave me a sort of childish joy: once you start learning the actual optics and wiring of the visual system (as I did when I was studying it), you lose all compunction about playing with it and viewing your own mind’s mechanics in action. Optical illusions are great for this, too.
Next we have focus. Your eye focuses differently from most cameras, but the end result is similar. Try holding your finger out at arm’s length and focusing on it, then on something distant that is directly behind it. Obviously the focus changes, and you may have noticed that while the distant object was blurry while you looked at your finger, your finger (in double) was in focus while you looked at the distant object. That has to do with the optic qualities of your eye, which I won’t go into here, but it’s still important. More important, however, is this: try it again, and this time pay attention to the feeling in your eye. Feel that? Sort of like something’s moving but you can’t tell exactly what? Well, your eyes are rotating a bit, but only a few degrees, in order to converge further out, but more importantly, you’re feeling your the muscles of your eye actually crush or stretch out the lens of the eye, changing the path and internal focal plane of the light entering your eye. Farsightedness and nearsightedness occur at this stage, when either the lens or the eyeball itself is misshaped, resulting in focus being skewed or difficult to resolve one way or another.
Why do I go into all this detail? Well, because I think it’s interesting. And also because if you want to understand 3D display technology, it’s probably a good idea to understand your native 3D acquisition tools. How depth is created in 3D displaysThere’s a simple explanation here and a complicated explanation. The simple one first: 3D displays create the illusion of depth by presenting a different image to each eye. That’s it. And that’s something that all 3D displays have in common, no matter what. In a fit of uncommon camaraderie among media and electronics companies, standards were even developed that encode a 3D stream similarly to normal stream, except with totally separate left and right eye images baked right in. There are variations, of course, but it’s a surprisingly practical approach they agreed on. But how best to display it? Everyone differs in their opinions. Basically you have three fundamental techniques (and a few outdated or simply unused ones I’ll mention briefly) of sending the “right eye” image to the right eye and the “left eye” image to the left eye (RIP Lisa Lopes). If you imagine each image to be tailored to its respective eye (it’s hard to fake), a perfect 3D display would show this:
In practice that doesn’t really happen. Let’s take a look at the techniques used to approximate it. Filtered lenses
The most modern version of filtered lenses (bottom illustration) uses polarization — originally linear, now circular polarization (RealD) is used, since it allows you to tilt your head without affecting the image. The objection to this tech is that the brightness of the image is essentially halved. Circular polarization in general is really cool, by the way. I submit that a particle may also have a wave-based quantum polarization, fading in and out of existence. But that is neither here nor there. Literally! Oh, I crack myself up. Active shutter glasses
There are a number of objections to this technology:
As you can see, it’s quite a list, though some of these flaws are being remedied. One wonders why so many companies have gotten on board with such a thing. Well, it offers much more opportunity for making money, for one thing, and they don’t have to modify their screens in any way other than increasing the refresh rate, for another —saving them precious R&D money. My personal opinion is this technology will remain on top until someone’s skunk works research team produces a viable alternative in the form of circular-polarized TV display filters that don’t affect the image too much. Autostereoscopic display
As you might expect, there are issues with this method as well.
Other ways exist of showing 3D on single screens without glasses: the use of two complementary displays (in “VR goggles” or the like), for instance, but these methods of showing two images to the visual system generally make too many compromises in cost or image quality. For you, there are mainly the ways shown above. I make no secret of my preference for circular-polarized glasses: they’re cheap and effective, only held back by the brightness and lighting method of whatever screen you’re using. I think they’ll win out in the end, but as we move on to the “dangers,” please to remember that the methods mentioned are more or less equally exposed to these persistent problems. There is also an ongoing conflict among 3D filmmakers concerning the use of convergence versus parallel. This is a technical consideration not of general interest, but in the interest of completeness I should say that there are points on both sides. Filming is far, far simpler with cameras aligned in parallel, but some insist that convergence is necessary to create the more compelling 3D effect. It’s far from settled, and I expect to have a separate post on that in the near future. Something not in conflict is the quality of films created using 2D-to-3D conversion. These Franken-films are a production disaster and the coarseness of their depth cues would give anyone a headache. Avoid at all costs. One last note: stereoscopic technologies usually assume good vision to some degree in viewers. A majority of people have some defect in their vision, however, most often nearsightedness in one eye or the other, or minor astigmatism. This can be difficult to allow for, resulting in glasses breaking the 3D effect, and of course the necessity of wearing 3D glasses over one’s glasses is a deal-breaker for many. Expect this to be catered to in the next generation of 3D displays. They have to walk before they can run. Why and to whom 3D displays are dangerous
Well, in Samsung’s case it’s specific to active-shutter glasses. I mentioned above that these glasses can produce seizures and other effects. What happens is this: having each eye being completely blocked out thirty or sixty times per second is the equivalent of having a high-frequency strobe going off in your face. You’re probably aware of the danger this presents to epileptics and others: seizures, nausea, and fatigue are not uncommon. Furthermore, though this hasn’t been adequately investigated to my knowledge, it seems to me that the constant strobing might result in fatigue of your iris and lens muscles, which are constantly receiving conflicting information. That’s getting better, however: the precision is increasing and duration of blackout decreasing, which means your unconscious is less likely to “see” the blackout. But there are objections to 3D that apply whether you’re using shutter glasses or not (if you’d rather have Bill Nye explain this to you, click here). The issue is simply this: you’re tricking your eyes and your mind into thinking there is depth where there isn’t. But it begins to look less like a trick and more like a serious deception if we add two things into consideration: one, that perceiving depth is an active process that involves muscles and movement, and two, vision is a learned skill. Think back to when you were focusing on your finger, and then on the distant object. Your eye “knows” that to focus on a more distant object, it has to perform a certain transformation on the lens in order to bring that object into focus. When you see an object in a movie, your eye immediately tries to correct for that object’s distance by deforming your lenses— but nothing happens! “Whaaat?” your visual system thinks, “That car should be coming into focus!” But it doesn’t and it won’t for the foreseeable future, and meanwhile every time the focus changes, or the shot changes, or the camera moves, or the characters move, your eye is attempting to refocus, to change its shape. This creates fatigue in the muscles and confusion in the brain.
When you shift your attention and gaze to another (out of focus) object, your eyes also naturally change their point of convergence. This occurs when you’re watching 3D movies as well; you can even see with your naked eye the bones of the 3D effect, in that objects behind or in front of the plane of focus will be out of phase with each other (they’ll appear blurry or in double; the farther from what the plane of focus, the more so). When your eyes change convergence, they naturally want to change focus, since in a majority of cases, changing the point you’re looking at means changing the shape of your lens. Again, though, your eye and brain are tricked, and the act of focusing is not only unnecessary but harmful to correct perception of the 3D image. So your eyes reconverge but the focus doesn’t change — an unnatural occurrence, though one that can be minimized by careful manipulation of the cinematography and maintaining control over the audience’s gaze. Another effect is parallax, which is the way objects move relative to each other when you move your head. The dissonance created depends on the distance from the screen, since objects don’t move much when you move your head a bit if they’re 40 feet away. But no matter what, when your eyes move, your brain expects the image to move if it’s perceiving depth. [thanks to the commenters who corrected me on these points] There is another result which at this moment is only theoretical, but is still scary for all that. When you’re born, your brain is only set up for vision the way an empty hard drive is set up to store data. The infrastructure is there, but you need to fill it. Babies are born into “one great blooming, buzzing confusion” as William James put it, and slowly learn to perceive and categorize objects, patterns, tendencies, and so on. Certain portions of the visual system are set up from the start to work toward certain ends, but it’s safe to say that if you moved early on to a world with no horizontal lines, the horizontal-line-detecting portion of your brain would be replaced by something more useful. You have a great deal of plasticity in the sensory portions of your brain, though arguably not as much as in less specialized cortex. Anyway, the point is that the visual lessons you learn can be unlearned. Yeah, it sounds kind of silly at first, but there are already reports of people having depth perception trouble after watching a 3D movie at home or in the theater. 3D gaming may even exacerbate the problem, since you’re not simply viewing a virtual 3D space but interacting with it. It’s conceivable that your visual system could become partly rewired in order to better understand how a 3D visual world can exist on a 2D physical plane.
I don’t want to sound alarmist, though: after all, who hasn’t felt residual effects from this or that experience for shortly after? One could argue that the transient disorientation following a 3D media viewing is as harmless as the common motion aftereffect, the Tetris effect, or any other illusion resulting from continual exposure to an abnormal stimulus. Experiments have been performed in which subjects wore vision-flipping prism glasses for an extended period (up to a week, I believe), and when the glasses were removed, their perceptions to returned to normal after some hours (either a surprisingly long or reassuringly short period depending on your perspective). Consider, though, that your vision returns to normal after a period of exposure only because it has a “normal” to which it can return. The danger isn’t so much to those of us with established visual systems, but to those who are still learning. I haven’t read any of the literature, and I suspect there is much discussion of when the visual system reaches “maturity,” but I think it’s safe to say that a toddler of 4 or 5 is approaching it but not quite there. Here danger lies. If a child’s visual system is taught with a significant portion of its input being a virtual 3D environment on a 2D physical plane, the brain will form with such a system being “legitimate,” possibly to the detriment of normal vision. And this is without reckoning the potential damage from the lack of visual variety such a child would experience. I’m no naysayer when it comes to digital means of entertainment for kids, but playing outside and in the real world fulfills a necessary part of our physical and mental development. A child exposed to excessive amounts of 3D media may not only develop incompletely due to lack of stimuli, but may develop incorrectly due to the presence of misleading stimuli. It’s a serious consideration, but to be honest, not one that seems to me to be a great risk at the moment. The proportion of the child’s time dedicated to 3D media would have to be huge, and would probably indicate more pressing problems than choice of entertainment. It may turn out that all this worrying was for nothing, but it can’t hurt to be educated about it. And it’s worth mentioning as well that a “native” understanding (i.e. dedicated brain space) of 3D/2D displays is not necessarily a bad thing. I myself have (if I may say so) rather good hand-eye coordination and reflexes partially attributable to playing Ninja Gaiden II and Mario Kart when I was younger. Even so, it’s worth being aware of what is possible and why. What you can do about it
There you have it. 3D is a promising and powerful tool, and I look forward to watching movies and playing games with it — once its initial growing pains are over with. Roger Ebert was impatient enough to condemn the technology at this early stage, and as you have read, there are plenty of reasons for him to do so. But I have faith that 3D can be applied tastefully and judiciously by those creating the media, and viewed with moderation and care by those of us who choose to consume it.
Source: CrunchGear | 19 Jun 2010 | 8:30 am Keep Kids Safe on Facebook (PC World)PC World - Scammers, spammers, purveyors of porn, hate mongers, and cyber predators -- it's no wonder parents are paranoid about what their kids are doing online.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Jun 2010 | 8:18 am APEC agrees to promote renewable energy: reportsAsia-Pacific ministers and officials agreed on Saturday to promote renewable sources and nuclear power in a bid to maintain energy security and cut greenhouse gas emissions in the region.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Jun 2010 | 8:12 am NJ city leading way in crime-fighting technology (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Jun 2010 | 8:04 am Hands-on with WowWee Paper Jamz Guitar and AmpWe got the chance to play with WowWee’s Paper Jamz Guitar and Amp (a drum set is also available), coming out in July. These are cool toys for budding musicians and allow you to play along to your favorite songs or play some freestyle chords. The toys have capitative surfaces, which means you can actually perform multitouch actions. There are no moving buttons except for the power switch and everything is controlled by touching the surface of the guitar. The guitar is $24.99 and the amp is $14.99. These were quite a bit of fun at our booth at the Disrupt conference and the kids seemed to enjoy them. I’d recommend them for someone a bit older, though, because my son is four and didn’t quite get the my “None more black” jokes.
Source: CrunchGear | 19 Jun 2010 | 8:00 am Kinect for Xbox 360 vs. Playstation Move - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 19 Jun 2010 | 7:36 am Deal of the Day: Two Xbox 360 rechargeable battery packs for the price of oneFROM GAMERTELL - You can use these to either replace your AA-eating monster of an Xbox 360 controller or replace your dying rechargeable packs. Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 19 Jun 2010 | 7:28 am TRMM Satellite Sees Tropical Depression 2-E DissipatingImage Caption: The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission's (TRMM) satellite image of Tropical Depression 2-E on June 17 at 19:59 UTC (3:59 p.m. EDT) showed that moderate rainfall (green) was occurring over the ocean, off the western Mexican coast. TRMM showed that light rain (blue) was falling over Oaxaca at that time. Credit: NASA, Hal PierceSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Jun 2010 | 7:14 am Tropical Storm Blas Bearing Bouts Of Strong ConvectionImage Caption: NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Tropical Storm Blas on June 17 at 20:41 UTC (4:41 p.m. EDT), and it showed two areas of very high, frigid clouds (purple) in the northeastern and eastern areas of the storm. Credit: NASA JPL, Ed OlsenSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Jun 2010 | 7:12 am Body Evolution In Island LizardsImage 1: The Greater Antilles are home to more than 100 Anolis species in a wide range of shapes and sizes. The Anolis fowleri, pictured here, is a rare anole from the Dominican Republic. Credit: Photo by Luke MahlerImage 2: The Greater Antilles are home to more than 100 Anolis species in a wide range of shapes and sizes. Each body type has adapted to use a different habitat. The Anolis alutaceus, pictured here, is a grass-bush anole from Cuba. Credit: Photo by Luke MahlerImage 3: The Greater Antilles are home to more than 100 Anolis species in a wide range of shapes and sizes. Each body type has adapted to use a different habitat. Anolis occultus, pictured here, is a twig anole from Puerto Rico. Credit: Photo by Luke MahlerSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Jun 2010 | 7:03 am Cyberattacks Could Leave Nations ParalyzedExperts warned Friday that NATO governments and the public must wake up to the threat of cyberattacks, which could paralyze a nation far more easily than conventional warfare. Melissa Hathaway, a former U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:25 am Down is the word for several major websitesSection: Web, Web 2.0 / Social Networking, Web Apps, Websites
Twitter suffered another outage as well, angering users who are getting fed up with the constant stability problems the site has had this month. They are blaming the huge spike in traffic caused by the disaster in the Gulf and now the World Cup for the problems. Finally, Intuit suffered a multi-day outage they are blaming on an “accidental” power outage at their data center. The outage knocked TurboTax, Quickbooks, Quicken, all the websites they host via their hosting service, and the main site offline. The problem has been fixed and the company sent a letter of apology to its customers. Read [PCWorld] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:14 am Fin Whale Sets Itself Free After Becoming StrandedRescuers and experts were astonished after a young whale stranded for three days on the edge of a Danish fjord suddenly began swimming again Friday. "It's fantastic, a miracle," witness Lisbeth Blumenkranz told AFP after the fin whale started moving.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Jun 2010 | 6:00 am Adults As Likely As Teens To Text While DrivingA new survey released Friday finds that U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:45 am FCC Group Crafting Plans to Open up Mobile Spectrum (PC World)PC World - The Federal Communications Commission Spectrum Task Force laid out preliminary ideas on Friday for making frequencies now used for satellite services available for conventional mobile broadband.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:28 am Like E-Books? Amazon Sells More of Them, For Less, Than Apple. For Now [MediaMemo]
That said, Mahaney points out that Amazon (AMZN), with its long-established relationships with publishers, still offers book buyers a wider selection of e-books than Apple does. And it sells its books for less. From his note published Friday:
Those gaps will narrow over time, assuming that Apple pushes hard with publishers to do so. And assuming it does, the real difference for buyers ought to be: Do you want to read e-books on a multipurpose device (the iPad)? Or one that costs a whole lot less, and does much less as well (the Kindle)? My guess is that even after Apple eats into the Kindle’s share, Amazon is going to find plenty of people who just want an e-reader. We’ll see.. Source: All Things Digital | 19 Jun 2010 | 5:00 am
|
There was a time when Facebook was at the forefront of mobile app development. Before there was even an App Store, the web app Facebook put out that was optimized for the iPhone was 
Given all the recent privacy uproar over Facebook, this Fall’s Facebook movie, 
We all know that the 
If you were one of those folks who have threatened to move to Verizon due to your outrage over AT&T’s announcement that they would be dropping their unlimited data plans, you may want to move to Sprint instead.
Palm has just offered up a pretty unique promotion for paid apps in the webOS App Catalog—they are all 50% off. Well technically speaking, “nearly all” of them are 50% off. But either way, its a great day to be a webOS user and a good time to start searching for and downloading those apps that have been on your wish list. 
Once the two images have been presented to your retinas, they pass back through the optic nerve to various visual systems, where an incredibly robust real-time analysis of the raw data is performed by several areas of the brain at once. Some areas look for straight lines, some for motion, some perform shortcut operations based on experience and tell you that yes indeed, the person did go behind that wall, they did not disappear into the wall, and that sort of thing. Eventually (within perhaps 15 microseconds) all this information filters up into your consciousness and you are aware of color, depth, movement, patterns, and distinct objects within your field of view, informed mainly by the differences between the images hitting each of your retinas. It’s important to note that vision is a learned process, and these areas in your visual cortex are “programmed” by experience as much as by anatomy and, for lack of a better term, instinct.
The original. The red-blue, red-green, or magenta-cyan (or “anaglyph,” the coolest word in this story after “parallax barrier”) glasses that came to symbolize 3D split a black-and-white (and later, color) image into two complementary components. I won’t get deep into the mechanics of it (Wikipedia has an 
This is the current method of choice for most 3D TV companies. The media is displayed at a high framerate, and the glasses rapidly switch between black and clear using a pair of low-latency transparent LCD screens. In this way, one eye sees nothing (for as little as a hundredth of a second or so) while the other sees its “correct” image, and a few microseconds later, the situation is reversed: the opposite eye’s image is displayed and the LCDs have switched. The benefit is that each eye is getting the “full” image whenever it’s getting anything (unless they’re cheating and doing it via interlaced field switching).
These have been around for a while, at various levels of sophistication, and are now in the spotlight as the 3D method used by the Nintendo 3DS. You probably saw something of the lenticular lens method (a saw-tooth prism that directs light in varying direction) in “holographic” display in the 90s on a fancy CD jewel case covers (I remember it from Tool’s Aenima (yeah yeah)). The principle is that by some method or another, one pixel or group of pixels has its light directed to one eye, and another group to the other. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, but nowadays it is most likely to be a parallax barrier: a series of slits in the display, precisely placed to allow light from every other line of pixels to go one way or the other. Even lines of pixels go right, and odd lines go left, for instance. This enables the image to be split without the use of glasses — a benefit not to be underestimated.
Down was the word for several major websites this week. Apple and AT&T both had the overwhelming flood of customers rushing to pre-order the upcoming iPhone 4 crash their sites-in fact the problem got so bad that they, along with Best Buy, had to stop taking pre-orders all together.