Wize product review aggregator. ‘Wize sucks in thousands of product reviews from all over the web and calculates what they call a WizeRank (ala Google’s PageRank) based on what folks are saying. View products listed by WizeRank by category (like digital cameras or flat panel televisions) and view reviews from all over the web in one place with links to buy online.’
Lifehacker
‘Yours Truly,’ the E-Variations. ‘As negotiations started to break down, the sign-offs started to get decidedly shorter and cooler,” Mr. Troutwine recalled. “In the beginning it was like, ‘I look forward to speaking with you soon’ and ‘Warmest regards,’ and by the end it was just ‘Best.’ ” The deal was eventually completed, but Mr. Troutwine still felt as if he had been snubbed.’
New York Times
Tmsuk unveils Ubiko: the personable cellphone salesbot. ‘Formerly known as the RIDC-01, this newly-named 44-inch tall employee on wheels sports a “catlike face,” internal DVD player, LCD display to show advertisements / presentations, built-in cameras and infrared sensors, and remote-controllable arms that hand out balloons and other niceties to potential customers. Ubiko can even spark a conversation about how bad you’ll need downloadable movie services on your next mobile, and reportedly boasts a “nasal electronic voice” that’s sure to grate passerbyers’ nerves.’
Engadget
Gigabyte gets official with g-Smart i120. ‘Though we’d have to put that tricky keypad through its paces ourselves before signing off on its goodness, the specs don’t lie: you get a 2.1 megapixel cam, 256MB of ROM with miniSD expansion, Bluetooth, FM radio, 64MB of RAM, 802.11b / g (for when the GPRS data speeds don’t quite cut it) — and perhaps most notably, a TV tuner capable of pulling in NTSC, PAL, and SECAM with recording capability.’
Engadget
Cell phone unlocking legal (for three years). ‘The provision likely to be of most interest to consumers is the one allowing cell phones to be unlocked and used on other networks. The Copyright Office allowed this exception because the software that prohibits users from accessing their phone’s firmware has little to do with copyright and much to do with a business model.’
Ars Technica
Free DVD rentals from your local Redbox. ‘For the uninitiated, Redbox vending machines let you rent and return DVDs. They’re cropping up all over, in places like grocery stores and McDonald’s. You can rent online, Netflix-style, and then pick up your movie at the Redbox, or just rent on-the-spot.’
Lifehacker
Smart homes a reality in S Korea. ‘The air quality here is important to mother and child and so she pops on the air purifying unit, which could be anywhere in the home, because it gets its instructions from the plug socket. Each flat makes use of the electricity cables to transfer data as well as power. Each appliance has to be compatible with a system called HomeNet, one of a number of competing systems on offer in South Korea. The choice of service also limits what devices Koreans can buy to hook into the system as each appliance needs to be compatible.’
BBC NEWS
Credit Card Alarm Prevents Binge Shopping, Thievery, Forgetfulness. ‘The Credit Card alarm will beep every 20 seconds that the card is removed, therefore preventing you from leaving the card at a restaurant or store.’
Gizmodo
Robot with ‘human soul’ explores remotely. ‘Technology that lets a human “inhabit” the body of a distant robot for remote exploration is being tested in Germany. The robot sits on top of a wheeled platform and has an extendable arm that it uses to manipulate objects. An operator moves the robot around by simply walking or using a foot pedal and can see out of twin cameras positioned on the robot’s head after donning a head-mounted display.’
New Scientist
Faces of Extreme Death: Oregon Scientific’s Sweet ATC2K Helmet Cam. ‘Just in time for snowboarding season is Scientific Oregon’s Xtreme helmet cam. It’s waterproof, uses SD cards, and shoots at 640 by 480 at 30FPS. It’s half the size of the original cam, the not so good ATC-1000, notorious for shipping inside of a fully stocked first aid kit.’
Gizmodo
EMI puts your medical history on a digital business card. ‘EMI’s 911 rCard places every quirk and prior health issue you’ve ever had onto a single wallet-sized card, which can be viewed immediately by any medical personnel that would need pertinent information statinum. The “vivid, full color LCD” can display everything from medical charts to photos / text describing the patient’s history, and sports a built-in battery that can handle “about two hours” of constant viewing before it needs recharging.’
Engadget
Design your own Penguin cover. ‘Penguin has released six classic titles with pure white, art-quality covers for people to design their own book jackets. Titles include The Picture of Dorian Gray,Magic Tales from the Brothers Grimm and Emma.’
Boing Boing
Fujitsu’s concept PC now a working prototype. ‘Before we could just pan it off as novel concept, but it turns out that working prototypes are now flittering about inside Fujitsu R&D. No specs have been released but we can tell that device features a fingerprint reader for security and what are most likely dedicated media or gaming (or both) controls available before unfurling the QWERTY.’
Engadget
Plastic paper to ‘cut’ emissions. ‘Toshiba has developed a printer that uses plastic “paper” that can be re-used hundreds of times. The electronics firm said the printer could help companies reduce carbon emissions as it helped to cut the amount of paper they consume.’
BBC NEWS
RTX Dualphone: First PC-less Cordless Skype Phone. ‘We’ve reviewed Skype phones before that can make calls on both the Skype network and the regular landline, but the RTX Dualphone is the first one that can do both without the need of a PC.’
Gizmodo
Cellfire Express Delivers Digital Coupons to Your Mobile. ‘If the thought of carrying coupons on your cell phone seems enticing, you’ll be glad to know that Cellfire (a free app that lets you redeem coupons via your mobile) is now available on any phone with Internet access (it was initially rolled out for Cingular users only). Just log onto the site to create an account and when you want to redeem a discount, all you have to do is show the cashier your digital coupon.’
Gizmodo
Chatter Pillow, a glanceable and cuddly way to stay on IM. ‘The pillow basically allows Stern to stay on IM from her bed or her couch, without the burden of a laptop — one of the pillow’s trio of icons will light up when one of three possible messages are received, so long as they’re sent only from her boyfriend. If he sends “talk to me,” “xo,” or “on my way,” then the icons (pictured) will glow blue accordingly.’
Engadget
Remote Control Mail: Check Your Postal Mail on the Web. ‘The company receives your postal mail, scans the outside of what’s sent to you and provides a web interface to quickly sort through letters, bills, magazines and direct mailings. It looks like a lot of fun and very useful for some people.’
Techcrunch
Sensor-clad shirt directs wheelchair sans use of arms, hands. ‘The garment is printed with “52 flexible, piezoresistive sensors made of electroactive polymers that change voltage depending on the angle at which they are stretched.” By dynamically sensing the direction and intentions of the user, it can channel the signals to motorized chairs in order to perspicaciously propel severely handicapped individuals who have lost the use of their arms.’
Engadget
Russian Mouse Made of Space Technology. ‘I probably wouldn’t use one of these for my day-to-day mousing, but I gotta say, for a homemade mouse, these mice ain’t that bad looking. They’re wireless, they come with their own USB receiver, and you can even get them dressed up in leather.’
Gizmodo
Motorists to give fingerprints. ‘Officers will scan a vehicle’s number plates using a special camera that checks if the car is subject to an offence, like being uninsured. If the driver does not convince police he is giving them a correct name, they will fingerprint him and verify his identity on the spot, instead of taking him to the police station.’
BBC NEWS
Big brother is listening to you. ‘o prevent fights breaking out, surveillance cameras in the city of Groningen have been adapted to listen out for voices raised in anger. Microphones attached to the cameras feed the sound signals to software that can detect voices that are aggressive in tone. “Aggressive people tend to tense their larynx, and the sound made by their vocal cords is distorted,” says Peter van Hengel of developer Sound Intelligence, a spin-off of the University of Groningen. This means that high frequency vowel sounds span a broader frequency range. “A truly aggressive voice is very hard to imitate,” he says. In a trial earlier this year, police made three arrests after being alerted by the system.’
New Scientist
Chefs are communicating with home cooks via via phone, email and instant-messaging services. ‘A growing number of chefs are communicating with home cooks via phone, email and instant-messaging services. Web-based services like ChefsLine.com and Chefs.com, both launched in the past year, let anyone contact a chef for help with a cooking crisis or a routine query. The most accessible chefs aren’t generally big names, but they include restaurant chefs, personal chefs and cooking instructors with backgrounds in diverse cuisines.’
Smart Mobs
Mpire to Unveil Power-Shopping Plug-In. ‘Today’s new Mpire product is a browser plug-in that pops up when looking at an item on any of several hundreds of 3rd party shopping sites and provides you cross-retailer data, related deals and coupons around the web and a fetching graph of eBay final auction sale prices rising or falling for your item over time.’
Techcrunch
Internationalized domain names coming next year. ‘In many parts of the world, frustration has built up for years over the need to use Latin characters to access most top-level domains (TLDs), even when they reference sites that are in languages like Tamil, Farsi, or Mandarin. Change is coming, but it’s slower than many would like.’
Ars Technica
One Lifers. ‘These consumers are aware of environmental issues, buy organic, recycle but also drive 4x4s, make the most of trips away on cheap airlines and still just about enjoy the pleasure of upgrade culture. Confessional consumption is conspicuous consumption with added guilt. It’s the psychology of consumers who will open up to friends about their ecological ‘no noes’. They are ‘piecegreen’ consumers who pick and choose their environmental moments.’
PSFK
French Jukebox Lets You Text in Your Song Requests. ‘Customers find a music “menu” on their table and after selecting the song(s) they want, text in the code. As much as I text (and believe me, I text a lot) I prefer the old fashioned way of walking up to the jukebox and manually selecting the songs I wanna hear.’
Gizmodo
N.Tech headphones sing straight into your bones. ‘The idea is that sound vibrates into the skull and then straight on to the auditory nerve; though if someone is blasting their iPod next to you on the train ride home, it would seem your auditory nerve is going to be getting a lot more noise than signal.’
Engadget
Texas Memory Systems’ builds freakin’ fast RamSan storage. ‘The RamSan drive has seriously ludicrous access times — usually in the neighborhood of 15 microseconds, 250 times faster than your garden-variety hard drive for mere mortals. Further, it’s got up to 50,000 random I/Os per second per single-ported controller, which is more than 100 times quicker than regular off-the-shelf drives. We’re not sure how much this will cost, but you can bet that it’ll be a lot more than the under-a-dollar per gigabyte trend that we’ve been seeing lately, and will be used only by very particular businesses for very particular needs.’
Engadget
Shapeshifting memory plastic. ‘The chemical engineers from MIT and the Helmhotz Association of German Research Centers demonstrated a plastic tube with three “programmed” diameters (4.5 mm, 6.9 mm, 5.8 mm) that are selected by altering the temperature.’
Boing Boing
LG planning eco-approved 52-inch wooden HD plasma. ‘While rummaging through the secret lairs of LG in Seoul, CNET UK caught a glimpse of the mysterious set, and while they weren’t allowed to film / photograph it, they rendered a look-alike and assured us that the “bezel was made of compressed wood (derived from renewable forests) and finished in white water-based paint.” Of course, no piece of AV equipment would be complete without a hint of silver, so LG added an aluminum trim to go along with the “lead-free / low-lead internal components.”‘
Engadget
Industrial Research creates 3D crime scene/movie set scanner. ‘According to the company, the scanner’s equally adept at creating a detailed 3D model of a crime scene as it is of a movie set and, what’s more, it can be done in only two minutes. The model can then be examined at will by police, presented to a jury, or be used to create the most disturbing Second Life avatar ever.’
Engadget
Fraunhofer Institute’s i-Stick will call for help if dropped. ‘our friends at the Fraunhofer Institute have just invented what they’re calling the i-Stick, a walking stick that will call an ambulance if it registers that it’s laying horizontally on the ground for too long, thereby sending for medical aid to its carrier. (We’re still trying to figure out what happens if the cat tips it over in the middle of the night.)’
Engadget
Met police to do the beat with head-mounted cameras. ‘Police officers in London have begun to use a camera mounted on their headgear in an effort to tackle anti-social behaviour. Officers in the 19 safer neighbourhood teams in the Haringey area have been issued with eight cameras, each the size of an AA battery, that record video images to a special utility belt. They are activated by a switch on the belt.’
The Register
Cucumis – A Small, Free Translation Community. ‘t is a community site for people who speak at least two languages and want to trade translation services. Translate text to earn points, then spend the points to have text translated into one of 22 languages. As a user’s reputation grows they earn “expert” status and receive more points for translations. The service itself is free, and Cucumis is a one-man project.’
Techcrunch
SalaryScout: Simple, Social Salary Comparison. ‘SalaryScout is a just launched salary comparison site that does many of the things that previously profiled site PayScale does but incorporates more of the social features typical of new developments on the web. It has a nice lightweight feel to it. Almost everyone wants to know if they should be making more money or feeling proud about how much they make relative to other people in similar lines of work.’
Techcrunch
Fat Legged Table Routes Wires. ‘The table features one fat leg with holes in the top and bottom so you can route your various computer, monitor, and USB wires through without cluttering up your workspace.’
Gizmodo
BlueOrganizer 3.0: Instant Vertical Search and Tagging. ‘if I’m on a web page about a movie I can right click and the Blue Menu will offer to let me search for that movie’s title, for its stars and director and for movies in the same genre in movie related databases. It will let me compare prices for the movie in shopping search engines and with one click I can send that movie to my Netflix queue.’
Techcrunch
MARA. ‘Our prototype application overlays the continuous viewfinder image stream captured by the camera with graphics and text in real time, annotating the user’s surroundings. The prototype consists of Nokia S60 platform phone and attached external sensor box providing position and orientation information to the phone via a Bluetooth connection.’
Nokia
Sony, NXP team up to standardize mobile wallets. ‘Sony Corp. from Japan and Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors said they will create a joint venture, to be established by the middle of next year, that will plan, develop, produce and market a secure chip that will include both companies’ contactless chip card formats: Mifare and FeliCa.’
Reuters.com
GeekCorps builds cantenna WiFi TV network in Mali. ‘In the village of Bourem Inaly, Mali there are over 120 television sets powered by 12-volt car batteries, but there is almost nothing to watch. With its CanTV project, Geekcorps has helped the local radio station stream video content to the local community over WiFi. The radio station, which rents these units out, benefits from a new monthly revenue stream while the villagers benefit with an improved source of news and entertainment.’
Boing Boing
Simulscribe. ‘Simulscribe is a voicemail service that transcribes your messages and sends them to you in an email.’
Cool Hunting
Wrist PDA Gives You the Magic Touch. ‘It creates a body area network (BAN) that lets you communicate with other peripherals by touching them. So for example, you could print documents from your PDA by touching a compatible printer or transfer files from your PDA by touching a computer.’
Gizmodo
Put Blockbuster Out of Business with Flic Scanner, Software. ‘Flic is a barcode scanner and software inventory logger that allows persons to keep track of DVDs, CDs and books with ease. Best of all, the software includes a logger—kind of like a checkout service— so you can easily keep track of who has your stuff.’
Gizmodo
ADS InstantVideo To-Go Accelerates iPod and PSP Video Encoding. ‘ADS announced InstantVideo To-Go, a nifty little $79.95 widget that supercharges compression of video into that oh-so-sweet H.264 format. The company calls it the first hardware-based H.264 conversion device for PCs. This little USB key is a video transfer accelerator that lets you convert any video into that butta-smooth format specifically for playback on an iPod or PSP, and lets you accomplish that feat five times faster than real time.’
Gizmodo
Click on Me Now or Visit Me Later. ‘About a third of consumers sometimes click on banner advertisements on the Web. But twice as many consumers sometimes respond to such ads indirectly, avoiding clicking on them but later visiting the Web sites advertised, according to a survey by DoubleClick, an online marketing-software company. 6,121 adults were surveyed in July via an online panel adjusted to reflect the Internet-using population.’
New York Times
176 Newspapers to Form a Partnership With Yahoo. ‘A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology, another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat.’
New York Times
Blyk — free, ad-supported, mobile telephones. ‘Blyk is a pan-European free mobile operator for young people, funded by advertising. We’re launching first in the UK market in mid-2007, with other markets to follow.’
Smart Mobs
Largest non-compressed video sent over the Internet. ‘the two-minute animated video, which was a scientific visualization of a cell structure from a bacterium, was streamed at a rate of 7.5 gigabits per second with a peak transfer rate of 8.4 gigabits per second. At that speed, the researchers could have transmitted approximately 12 movie DVDs in the same two minutes.’
Smart Mobs
Ronda’s Media Chair revokes desires to visit the outside world. ‘Sporting a stylish, modern design with questionably tall armrests, the Media Chair comes pre-loaded with a personal computer and a good reason to never leave the safe, familiar confines of your living room.’
Engadget
A wireless smart ball that senses position, direction, speed and acceleration. ‘Making its debut at ST’s stand at Electronica 2006, the smart golfball-sized object can operate as a free-hand personal computer mouse, compass, measuring tape, pedometer, or a 3D-object controller’
pasta and vinegar
Discover new music with Musicovery. ‘you pick a main genre, such as classical, soul, pop, etc. Then you pick a “mood” within that genre; this could be anything from energetic to positive to dark. After that, you’ll get a visual representation of your musical selections all looped together, and you can zip around from bubble to bubble as the whim strikes you.’
Lifehacker
BlueStates:. ‘A Bluetooth mobile phone user creates a radius of electronic awareness – what we call a “bluesphere” – extending as much as ten meters from their body. When two Bluetooth devices pass in proximity to one another, each senses the other. Data is exchanged – and promptly ignored. BlueStates: Exploring Relational Space uses its own, custom software sensors – which run on mobile phones, PDAs and computers – to listen intently to the bluesphere. These sensors contribute to a database record of proximal encounters, and this data is then used to build views into the social life of the city’s residents.’
networked_performance
Download of the Day: Uppity (Firefox). ‘The Uppity Firefox extension acts like the the Up button in Windows Explorer, navigating up one directory on a web page.’
Lifehacker
Wesabe: Personal Finances Made Easy. ‘Imagine Quicken in a web interface with the tagging powers of Flickr and you’ll pretty much have Wesabe pegged. Once I uploaded my bank data I used the Wesabe interface to add tags to all my expenditures. Wesabe’s tag system is incredibly smart, for instance I generally always fill up my tank at the Shell station near my house so I tagged one of those entries as “gasoline” and Wesabe added that tag to all the other entries with the same title. What’s more, every time I upload a new statement Wesabe will automatically add that tag to the new entries.’
Monkey Bites
ETRI’s Flexible OLED prototype. ‘Korea’s ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) is here to remind us that they, and others, are still working hard to bring Flexible OLED to market.’
Engadget
Cemetery 2.0. ‘Cemetery 2.0, by Elliott Malkin, is a concept for networked devices that connect burial sites to online memorials for the deceased. The prototype links the gravestone of Hyman Victor, Malkin’s great-grandfather, to his surviving Internet presence, including his: Flickr Genealogical Repository, Facebook Memorial Profile, Pedigree Resource File and Family Tree of the Jewish People entry .’
We Make Money Not Art
Political Parties Reap Data Mining Benefits. ‘Using new levels of sophistication in how they collect, clean and manipulate the information in their massive databases, the parties are able to predict with reasonable accuracy how individual voters will vote when they get to the polls, and to target voters individually where needed. For example, the new level of sophistication allowed the Democratic National Committee to target specific voters in otherwise solidly Republican districts to get them to the polls on Election Day.’
EWeek
Light Bead Curtain. ‘Each of the beads light up and emit a unique sound when touched by a user, enabling passers-by to play with the curtain by weaving their hands through it. The simple and direct interaction with the curtain makes users understand how to play.’
networked_performance
The new utility. ‘broadband internet access is becoming so vital for businesses that it can be seen as a new utility comparable to water and electricity, a new United Nations report has revealed.The UN’s Conference on Trade and Development’s 2006 Information Economy Report revealed that growing importance of high-speed internet access was “disturbing news” for the developing world’
Smart Mobs
Pocket Viewer, Catch the Small Print Everytime. ‘It has a nice 4″ x 3″ display that magnifies up to 7x actual size. All you have to do is place the Pocket Viewer on top of what ever it is you want to magnify. In my case a document, but in your case Sherlock maybe it’s a photo of a possible crime. Feel free because the Pocket Viewer has 3 different viewing modes including full color, text, and high contrast.’
Gizmodo
Robot, Heal Thyself. ‘A homemade robot was used for the experiments where one robotic leg was removed. The robot is programmed to do damage assessments by moving in sequences that look playful but allow the robot to determine where damage has occurred; once identified, it then self creates a new way to move without the missing limb and therefore is able to then carry on its mission.’
Tech News Watch
String-less Cup-and-String Communicator. ‘Tug the cord to activate, squeeze to talk and hold to the mouth and ear. The design of the Cup Communicator is focused around a series of physical actions and gestures that create a poetic etiquette of use and a tactile intimacy between user and object.’
Gizmodo
New GM Remote Control Key Fob Does it All. ‘With the GM key fob you can check the tire pressure, read the odometer, know your car’s fuel level, change the radio station and check the status of the locks.’
I4U News
emTrace WidgetStation Provides Desktop-Free Widgets. ‘t is essentially an LCD display with touch-sensitive buttons, USB connectivity, memory and Ethernet connectivity. It will actively display the widget of your choosing. And with the enormous amount of widgets now available, the WidgetStation provides endless possibilities.’
Gizmodo
Software distinguishes between online namesakes. ‘The software tool, developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo in Japan, picks apart the results of a search engine query, identifying unique identities within these results. For example, it can tell the difference between Michael Jackson the pop singer and a travelling beer expert of the same name, who also appears on the first page of results produced by Google.’
New Scientist Tech
Location-based Social Mapping on your mobile. ‘It’s a location-based social mapping service that enables mobile phone users to share their location, status messages, photos and other on-the-go experiences with friends but unlike other social location services, automatically updates the location of everyone in a private network and displays that information directly on a map on the phone. It even sends an alert when a friend in the network is near, putting an end to missed connections in the mall, at the movies or around town.’
gizmag
FlipTrack: A More Sophisticated Slide Show Tool. ‘FlipTrack users select a song, then see the beat and lyrics displayed in a time line, drag and drop their photos in order and chose between transitions.’
Techcrunch
Condensed Baseball: Runs Without the Drips and Errors. ‘MagicSports 3 from CyberLink analyzes the action of a baseball game that has been recorded on a Windows-based PC with a TV tuner card, removing the commercials, the lineup changes and the foul balls. The interesting bits are arranged at the bottom of the screen as a series of thumbnails, labeled according to their excitement level.’
New York Times
Buffalo BOMU-W24A/BL Gyroscopic Mouse Works On Desk, In Air. ‘Buffalo’s got this mouse, right, and you can use it both on your desk an in the air. Given the easy-to-remember name of BOMU-W24A/BL, the mouse makes use of gyroscopic witchcraft to let users flail the mouse in the air.’
Gizmodo
Second Life struggles with copying. ‘An open-source tool called CopyBot allows players to cruise around copying the objects sported by other players. Many SL players are upset by this, and demanding action. Second Life’s proprietors, Linden Labs, are trying to figure out what to do. They’ve ruled out eliminating third-party programs from Second Life, and they are on record as refusing to become copyright enforcers for their community. They are offering to temporarily adjudicate questions of infringement to see if they violate the Second Life terms of service, but they’re seeking better solutions, including reputation systems.’
Boing Boing
OLPC’s XO-1 gets its first “unboxing”. ‘Sure, the unboxing of a hand-assembled kind-sorta prototype might not totally count as an “unboxing” in the proper sense, but it’s fun to watch all the same, and it’s definite proof that the little machine from OLPC is really coming along.’
Engadget
Download of the Day: Adobe Digital Editions Beta (Windows). ‘Digital Editions fills a void that a lot of us are stumbling toward as more and more of our media goes digital. We’ve got great apps like Picasa for organizing and viewing our images, but a good Windows app for organizing your eBooks and PDFs has been lacking. Adobe Digital Editions may be just the app to fill that void.’
Lifehacker
Leo Burnett’s rain-sensitive cosmetic billboard. ‘The pictured woman sports finely groomed eyelashes when kept dry, but rainy weather creates black runs akin to real life scenarios to presumably suggest that ladies should make haste in picking up the run-resistant flavor of makeup.’
Engadget
Eventful. ‘A new website called eventful allows users to start a ‘demand’ for their favorite artist to come to their city and perform. The idea is that if a particular area creates enough demand, booking agents will take notice and stop through on tour. ‘
PSFK
Take your kids to the Zoo(.com) for safe searches. ‘Designed for tweens and teens (specifically, ages 8-13), the site pulls search results from the likes of Google and Wikipedia, and news from ABC, Fox, and Yahoo. Zoo.com purposely has no image-search capability, and it promises to weed out “adult” words while retaining suitable results. Says the press release A child using the search term “breast cancer” will get plenty of information, but the word “breast” delivers no results.’
Lifehacker
Control Room to air Universal acts’ shows on Web. ‘Control Room, which produces live concerts for digital outlets including Microsoft Corp.’s MSN Web portal, has signed a deal with Universal Music Group to stream performances of its artists — starting with rapper Snoop Dogg. Besides MSN, Control Room’s other distribution partners include satellite broadcaster DirecTV Group and wireless company Qualcomm, which plans to launch its service early next year.’
Reuters.com
Luxury Tulip Ego Laptop arrives in the U.S.. ‘The Tulip Ego is easily carried either on the shoulder or by hand with its rounded chrome handle and with its interchangeable skin system, it doesn’t just come in designer fabrics, finishes and colors, the skins can be changed anytime, anywhere using a customized USB-stick cap that comes with the laptop.’
gizmag
Physics promises wireless power. ‘a simple copper antenna designed to have long-lived resonance could transfer energy to a laptop with its own antenna resonating at the same frequency. The computer would be truly wireless. Any energy not diverted into a gadget or appliance is simply reabsorbed. The systems that the team have described would be able to transfer energy over three to five metres.’
BBC NEWS
Smartphones get a firewall. ‘Thiemann says that smartphones are attracting more and more software developers, both good and bad. Nokia, for instance, has 2 million registered developers, while Windows Mobile has 650,000. “The malware community is cutting its teeth and learning how to create for these devices,” he adds.’
The Register
Jangl Uses VOIP to Create Anonymous Phone Numbers. ‘Jangl provides an ID that users can give out to other people to create a VOIP number unique to a single relationship between two people. VOIP is used as the connection between any two phones, be they land lines, cell phones or VOIP calls. The service has been in use at Match.com for several weeks but it’s now available to anyone through the Jangl site.’
Techcrunch
Download of the Day: Lilt (Mac). ‘Lilt takes advantage of your Mactops light and sudden motion sensors to trigger user-defined actions – anything from launching apps to operating iTunes.’
Lifehacker
Portable Desk Lets You Get Horizontal with Your Laptop. ‘The Easy Desk Aluminum is a portable desk that can be twisted and bent to accommodate your positioning. The 5-pound desk can be used sofa style, desk style, or bed style.’
Gizmodo
Airlines to connect iPods to in-flight movie rigs. ‘Six major airlines are to fit aircraft passenger seats with iPod docks, Apple announced today. US carriers Continental, Delta and United, along with Air France, Emirates and KLM, will begin adding iPod connectors during the middle of next year.’
Reg Hardware
DNA tatoo = Datoo. ‘The idea of DNA tattoos (Dattoos) is to use the body itself as hardware and interaction platform, through the use of minimally-invasive, recyclable materials. (…) All hardware would be created on demand and assembled via a special online design portal. Users view, test-drive, and select their product from a variety of options, both functional and aesthetic. They also set the lifecycle of the product, to be utilized for a few hours or a much longer amount of time. Once users are satisfied with their specific configurations, they have this fully-functioning circuitry – including all UI-interactive and display functions – “printed” onto recommended areas of their skin.’
pasta and vinegar
Confabb: Find, Track and Review Conferences. ‘Confabb is a new service launching today that offers a centralized place to find information about all kinds of conferences. The site offers everything from speaker and event reviews to photos of the events after the fact through integration with Flickr. It’s an impressive full service site that could become the go-to spot for at least tech conference attendees and possibly a wider audience.’
Techcrunch
Listen to podcasts from your phone. ‘Web site Podlinez assigns a phone number to any podcast, meaning that you can listen to the latest episode of your favorite podcast any time you want; you just need to dial your podcast’s number.’
Lifehacker
Rocket develops “paper battery” for use with RFID, cosmetics. ‘While juicy, scientific details aren’t readily available, we do know that the “paper battery” won’t include any toxic chemicals, is “flexible and thin,” and molds together the companies “thin film technologies” with its battery knowledge. The company hopes to entice heavy RFID users, smart card manufacturers, and “cosmetic / drug delivery system” providers to utilize the paper battery in powering the already-miniscule devices.’
Engadget
NEC’s domesticated R100 robot welcomes you home, flips channels. ‘The bot is notorious for sparking conversation with its family, greets users by name, asks what it can do to help out, and even reads your email to you via its built-in WiFi capability. Moreover, it can beam commands to switch television channels, dim your lights, or activate a variety of appliances around the house.’
Engadget
New Gmail Feature: “Mute” endless threads. ’1) You get yet another annoying message in the same damn conversation that’s already been conversed to death. 2) You press the ‘m’ key. Unless a message is written *directly* to you (e.g., your name is in the TO spot), you’ll never see that message in your inbox again! In short, the Mute feature enables you to tell Gmail: “Archive this conversation AND all future posts in it… just have ‘em skip the inbox!”‘
Lifehacker
Wearable Instrument Shirt. ‘Scientists at the CSIRO’s Textile and Fibre Technology division in Australia have woven electronic sensors into a T-shirt (the WIS – the Wearable Instrument Shirt) so that it can be played liked a real guitar.’
We Make Money Not Art
The VuPOD Real Estate Immersion Room. ‘With the VuPOD immersion room, home shoppers are “surrounded by a 360-degree image projected on the walls around them”, so they can quickly view numerous prospective homes and sort out those worth actually visiting, cutting out all the travel time.’
gizmag
Flexible Hours, Using Your PC and Never Leaving Home. ‘Online volunteering, long thought of as more superficial than on-site volunteering, has entered a new, smarter phase. While many online volunteering opportunities still focus on simple tasks requiring little time, more and more provide ways for volunteers, who are working flexible hours at home computers, to have a more direct and meaningful effect. At nonprofit groups, online volunteer management has grown more sophisticated after a decade of trial and error. New research has helped; so has the increase of Web sites like onlinevolunteer.org, which help groups find online volunteers.’
New York Times
Haptic simulation of virtual textiles. ‘The project team’s final goal is to integrate two different haptic technologies: a device which can ‘feel’ the kinesthetic forces acting on the simulated virtual fabric, and tactile arrays on two fingertips to show the vibrotactile stimulations on the surface of the simulated fabric.’
ZDNet.com
Get shopping lists for HGTV projects texted to your mobile. ‘HGTV’s “Don’t Sweat It” program is now offering free text-messaged shopping lists for any of their half-day home improvement projects. [...] Next time you’re in the mood to rip out your carpet, just text carpet to 44881 and you’ll have your materials in no time.’
Lifehacker
Renaissance Launches Laptop for Distraction-Free Learning. ‘While the Neo by AlphaSmart laptop does not have Internet capabilities, it does feature resourceful learning software that will focus on helping kids develop writing, keyboarding and quizzing skills, which could help students stay on task without potential Internet distractions.’
EWeek
Cloudy Day Won’t Rain On Laser Communications. ‘The researchers developed an approach called free-space optical communications that not only can improve air-to-air communications, but also ground-to-air links. Because their approach provides fiber optic quality signals, it is also a solution for extending fiber optic systems to rural areas without laying cable and may eventually expand the Internet in a third dimension allowing airplane passengers a clear, continuous signal.’
Tech News Watch
Belkin F5U307 Creates Cascading USB Sandwich. ‘The folks at Belkin have a knack for making ordinary desktop peripherals look stylish and it seems they’ve struck again, this time giving our trusty USB hub a Lego-like makeover.’
Gizmodo
IBM accelerates push into 3D virtual worlds. ‘IBM has already established the biggest Second Life presence of any Fortune 500 company. It uses the world primarily for training and meetings but has also built a simulation of the Wimbledon tennis tournament. The company is also looking to build a private 3D intranet where it will be able to discuss sensitive business information. It is moving to champion what it calls “v-business” — short for virtual business — just as it championed “e-business”, or electronic business, during the dot-com boom.’
Reuters.com
Turn any image into a Google Map. ‘MapLib is an extremely simple app created by Xiao Yisheng that allows you to upload a large image and instantly apply the Google Maps interface to it for easy viewing. Upload an image as large as 6000 x 6000 and host it on MapLib (or embed it on your blog or website) with its own URL and Google Maps viewing interface.’
Google Maps Mania
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