Messages from All News category

From tiny dotcoms the mighty internet has grown

Monday will see the 25th anniversary of the registration of the domain name Symbolics.com. Granted, it's not particularly catchy, and to this day it's renowned for nothing other than being the first.
Publication date: 2010-03-10 more

Sex.com, 'most expensive domain name in history', up for auction

Sex.com, the web domain touted as the most expensive in history, is up for auction, with bidding starting at $1m.
Publication date: 2010-03-10 more

Sony moves to next dimension with 3D TV rollout

Sony will launch 3D televisions in June, entering an increasingly crowded market that is betting the revolutionary TV will become the next hot product in the electronics industry.
Publication date: 2010-03-10 more

Google Streetview to cover every UK road

Google's controversial mapping service will soon cover 238,000 miles of the UK's roads.
Publication date: 2010-03-10 more

Amazon to improve the Kindle

Users could be able to browse the whole web with the Kindle
Publication date: 2010-03-10 more

Happy Hour Watch tells you when it

As both a man and an alcoholic, constantly having an instrument for the opening of beer bottles on my trembling, delirium tremensing capapace is a priority. I used to just use my back molars, but when those grinded away to nothingt, I quickly learned how to open a beer with a second, unopened bottle. But that [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-10 more

New York City Map created in 8-bit format

Have you ever pondered what an existing modern city map would look like in the world of role-playing 8-bit video games? Didn’t think so but, thanks to programmer Brett Camper, you won’t ever have to. Over at 8bitnyc, Camper has created a full size map of New York City using 8-bit graphics and map features he compiled [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-10 more

Google graphs search trends for the Academy Awards

Now that the winners are largely known, Oscar fever has just about died down… but if you’ve ever been interested about what Internet search patterns look like while the Academy Awards are going on, look no further than Google’s latest blog post, which shows just how searching trends broke down over the course of three [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-10 more

Better believe it: Steve Ballmer praises Apple

Steve Ballmer has grown tired of all the iPhone bashing and is attempting to play nice. According to a new report, Microsoft’s chief executive has praised Apple for the creation of the App Store. The sweet talk came during a speech that Ballmer gave in front of the University of Washington’s computer-science building, The Seattle Times [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-10 more

Lady Gaga makes her Rock Band debut

Four songs from pop idol Lady Gaga will hit Rock Band's DLC store next week, Harmonix and MTV Games announced in a press release Tuesday. South Park's Eric Cartman will also join the roster with his rendition of "Poker Face."
Publication date: 2010-03-10 more

Survey: 40% of music lovers don

If you read this site, you probably know about legal onlinemusic services like Spotify, Pandora or Last.fm or Napster… but a stunning percentage of people don’t. They believe that the only way to get music online is illegally: the only source they know of for downloadable music is Bittorrent. Their ignorance of the legal online [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

HP takes a page from Apple

Not content with being an also-ran, HP released a new teaser for its forthcoming Slate device that looks a lot like the latest iPad commercial that Apple aired during the Oscars. The commercial arrived just as Apple begun hyping up the iPad ahead of the official April 3rd US debut. The new HP Slate teaser, posted [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Nokia patents

Keeping your gadgets juiced is a perpetual problem, and as gadgets become more and more power hungry, one that seems ever more intractable. It’s not a big deal to plug in a gadget, of course, but when your smartphone only lasts five hours at a time, the added inconvenience becomes maddening. Various companies have played [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Power Gig controller allows you to play Rock Band with a real guitar

If the sales figures of the newest releases in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series are anything to go by, we’re at the end of the rhythm music game market saturation. That will be welcome news to many notable rock musicians, who have endlessly bemoaned the unproven fact that the plastic guitars used in [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Ribbon Hero is now available for Microsoft Office

You might remember that, late last year, we dug up a patent application made by Microsoft for a product called Ribbon Hero… a fun little idea that took the precepts of Guitar Hero or Rock Band and applied them to the “ribbon” in Microsoft Office products. The patent described Ribbon Hero as
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Obama administration hires anti-PowerPoint crusader Edward Tufte

Although it’s debatable if they are getting much of anything done, the Obama Administration has an excellent habit of hiring some very cool, and very smart people. Their latest hire continues that tradition nicely: statistician, infographic maker and informational critic Edward Tufte has been appointed to serve on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, which is [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Freescale

Earlier this year at CES, Freescale revealed a $200 smartbook tablet reference design that they were shopping around to partners. It was a beautiful tablet for the price, powered by a 1GHz i.MX515 ARM processo. Other specs included 512MB of DDR2 RAM, a 1,024 x 600 multitouch screen, between 4GB to 64GB of internal storage, [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

FCC plans to free up wireless spectrum for free or low-cost national 3G service

Is Internet access a fundamental human right? According to a BBC global study that we posted about yesterday, 79% of adults believe that it is. Whether or not you agree with that statement, one thing’s for sure: most people want free internet. And it looks like the Obama administration is hoping to give them just [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

TiVo posts $10MM loss as subscribers flee to other services

For many years, I looked at the TiVo perched atop my television as practically the perfect gadget, changing the way I watched television forever. But then broadband took off, Hulu and Netflix came along, iTunes started telling television shows, and televisions got their own DVR abilities built right into them. Ever since then, my TiVo [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

RIP: Dell Adamo XPS

The Dell Adamo XPS was such a beautiful machine. Ostensibly, it aped the MacBook Air, in that it was a machine so thin that it seemed like an easy task to use it through slice through a human jugular. Okay, not quite, but it was 9.9mm thin, which is an awful small footprint to shove [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

China envisions supertrain that can travel from Beijing to London in two days

The world’s a tiny place indeed if you’re not adverse to jumping on an airplane, hurtling into the sky for a few hours and then plunging in a controlled, shrieking fall down at the earth’s crust several thousand miles away… but some people find that prospect a bit unnerving. They’ve got options to air travel, [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Energizer USB battery charger comes with software that gives full backdoor access to your computer

On the surface of things, the Energizer Duo USB battery charger is the most innocuous of gadgets. You simply plug it into your USB port, slap in some batteries, and voila! Your computer juices them up. Not the most useful of gadgets, okay, but not bad for the road warrior on the go who needs [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Analysts say PS3 could outsell Wii, Xbox 360 by 2013

Look, Sony’s PlayStation 3 is a great console, made even better by the recent update to the PS3 Slim. That’s undeniable. But what is also undeniable is that they totally squandered their market dominance with the PlayStation 2 this generation, allowing Nintendo and Microsoft to pass them as the biggest selling and most important consoles [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Facebook to become location aware in April

Although it was at first dismissed as just another social networking site and time waster, Facebook is growing into a credible Internet business. It’s working to tie the vast majority of both your personal and Internet life into one central resource which can then be plunged for trending data to be sold to advertisers. According [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

BBC science geeks create car that runs off of coffee grounds

As a professional blogger, I am fueled by coffee in a way most comparable to the way that an automobile is fueled by gasoline. Without coffee, I do not function: I am not so much zombie as corpse. But get a cup or morning joe into me and I spring to life, my engine combusting, [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

3 year old girl fatally shoots herself after mistaking gun for Wiimote

I’m not quite entirely sure if I believe this story, but it is terribly sad if it is true: according to WTVF-TV in Nashville, Tennesse (and picked up by Fox News), a three year old girl has fatally shot herself after mistaking a loaded handgun as a Nintendo Wiimote. According to the story, the shooting happened [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Sony announces eight new 3D-capable Bravia HDTVs

Capitalizing on that new-fangled “three dimensional seeing” thing all you crazy kids are talking about these days, Sony just unleashed a veritable torrent of PR on the blogosphere about their eight new 3D Bravia televisions, coming to Japan (and likely the US) in June. The Bravia LX900 series comes in four different screen sizes, coming [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Games disguised as Excel and Word prove a hit with office workers

Computer games disguised as Excel and Word documents which allow office workers to waste time without attracting the attention of their bosses are taking off on the web.
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Microsoft reshuffles browsers on ballot screen

The Windows-maker has adjusted the algorith that generates the order in which browsers are shown on its ballot screen, as Opera says downloads have tripled since process began.
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Microsoft reshuffles browsers on ballot screen

The Windows-maker has adjusted the algorith that generates the order in which browsers are shown on its ballot screen, as Opera says downloads have tripled since process began.
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Google 'testing TV search service'

Google is testing a new search service that will make it easier for people to find their favourite TV shows and YouTube videos, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

'Ireland too small for comparison sites to survive'

The price-comparison website sector in Ireland is still small and underdeveloped compared with other EU countries.
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Bits and bytes: Imelda helps ring in the changes for Vodafone

Vodafone finally took the wraps off its iPhone offering last week with the help of Imelda May -- and no surprise it looks a lot like O2's deal.
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Digital Life: A phone that's greener than Gormley

It isn't easy being green, as Kermit the Frog used to sing. If you're a gadget fiend, you may worry which hideously toxic chemicals went into the making of your shiny new mobile.
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Game on: Heavy Rain flooded with cinematic features

Heavy Rain, PS3:There's been a mistake. Should Heavy Rain be reviewed here at all? Maybe it should be filed under the movie genre, because it has much more in common with cinema.
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Washington DC based Janmedia Provides Probono Assistance to SEDC

Washington DC - March 8, 2010: Janmedia Interactive, INC, a leading Washington DC Digital Agency accepted a Pro Bono support request from the Socio-Economic Development Center for Southeast Asians (SEDC). SEDC is a Providence-based nonprofit that provides social services to the Southeast Asian community.
Publication date: 2010-03-09 more

Seven HTML related working drafts published

On March 4, the W3C published no less than seven new or updated working draft documents related to HTML: HTML5 HTML: The Markup Language HTML5 differences from HTML4 HTML+RDFa HTML Microdata HTML Canvas 2D Context Additional Requirements for Bidi in HTML Read full postPosted in (X)HTML, HTML 5.
Publication date: 2010-03-08 more

First iPad advert shown during Oscars

The first advert promoting Apple’s iPad device went live last night during the Oscars.The 30-second advert takes the viewer on a whirlwind tour of all of the functions the hotly anticipated tablet style computer is capable of, to a soundtrack of The Blue Van’s 'There Goes My Love’.The surprise spot advert launched after the news emerged last week that the iPad will go on sale in the US on April 3 and follow suit around the world on an unconfirmed date in ‘late April’. British consumers will be able to buy both the Wi-Fi only and Wi-Fi and 3G versions of the device in late April, Apple confirmed. The launch date is slightly later than anticipated, but analysts have been warning that unspecified "manufacturing problems" could lead to some delays.US shoppers will be able to buy the Wi-Fi only model on April 3, with the Wi-Fi and 3G model available later in the month. They can start pre-ordering the devices online and in-store from March 12.Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, had been spotted on the red carpet at the beginning of the Oscars service. The brief TV advert succinctly demonstrates the devices’ numerous capabilities. The iPad, which has a 10in touch-screen, can be used to browse the web, listen to music, and watch movies, as well as download apps and read electronic books, magazines and newspapers.The iPad is something completely new,” said Jobs last week. “We’re excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before.”Apple is yet to announce UK pricing for the range of devices, but the entry-level model will cost $499 in the United States. However, the Wi-Fi only, 16GB iPad is expected to be priced around £389 when it goes on sale in the UK, according to anonymous sources close to Apple and its partners.
Publication date: 2010-03-08 more

Why Apple can't control its Chinese factories

While Apple is to be applauded for auditing its suppliers in an attempt to identify poor working conditions, its suppliers are so powerful that Apple can't effect real change - and nor can any other tech company.
Publication date: 2010-03-08 more

District 9 wins the Oscar for most BitTorrented movie

Okay. We realize that there is no such category in the Academy Awards, but in these modern times, where movies could find themselves on the Internet even before they are officially released in the theater, perhaps there should be. Filesharing and BitTorrent blog, TorrentFreak, put together a list of the most illegally downloaded Oscar “Best Picture” [...]
Publication date: 2010-03-07 more