Hot on the trail of the Sony Ericsson Paris video we saw a few days ago, a demo video of the equally unannounced-yet-widely-known-about Sony Ericsson G702 BeiBei has hit the tubes. Unfortunately, the guy with the snazzy cardigan from the Paris video doesn’t make an appearance this time around. Like the Paris, the WiFi totin’ BeiBei is expected to get its official announcement at Sony Ericsson’s event coming up on June 17th. [Via IntoMobile] → Read More
Here comes IE8, just like every IE before it. Nick MacKechnie, a senior manager on the IE8 project, blogged that webmasters should get ready for IE8 by adding special IE8 tags to their websites. The irony is that the edits to HTML needed to make sites compatible with IE8 are to tell the browser that you’re making an HTML-compliant page. Basically, IE8 defaults to wanting everything the standard way, but you can tell it to handle things the Microsoft way if that’s how you’ve previously coded your site. While we like the idea of Microsoft finally making Internet Explorer default to Web standards, it still sucks that many sites have had to support older versions of IE for a decade, making special changes, that now have to be undone. Microsoft really needs to figure out a better way to do this. The problem was that years ago it decided that it was too powerful to adopt somebody else’s standards for HTML and made up its own. As IE browser share skyrocketed, Web designers had little choice but do things the MS way. Now that Web standard browsers are evening the score, webmasters can do things the right way. This is all a boondoggle that reminds one of Vietnam: it likely never should have happened in the first place, but once a mess is made you have to do what you can to fix it. Yes, I just compared Internet Explorer to the Vietnam War. Sue me. → Read More
Verizon Wireless is running a large, nation-wide 3G network. This much is known. They don’t yet have a 4G network, though we know they’re doing trials now of LTE, or Long Term Evolution, a GSM variant, but it’s not open to the public. Reader Jonathan snapped this shot of a Verizon Wireless reseller advertising 4G service. “4G Premium Retailer,” it says. Of course it’s just a stupid ploy to get attention, but could it also be false advertising? We think so. Jonathan says, I called that specific store by the way and I talked to some guy and I asked him if they were doing the 4G trial and he just answered with a sarcastic no. My cousin also said that he saw some of the stores by his house with them as well. Where is this happening? We’re going to do some digging and see if we can get some answers. But we know this: Verizon’s not selling 4G devices today. Thanks for the tip, Jonathan! → Read More
Scienticians have developed a way to scrub CO2 out of the air we breathe, meaning global warming from carbon emissions — like that produced from flying or driving — might be neutralized. It’s not a stand-alone solution to global warming, but if the technology goes into development we might well slow it down to a manageable pace. That doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and get a Hummer right now, indeed gas is still over $4 a gallon in most places, but the idea that I can tell my hippy friends to shove it when I drive my BMW around means I like this a lot. → Read More
This is pretty awesome. The fine people at Notcot have dug up an old copy of Fortune magazine featuring a cover story of the fall of Steve Jobs. This was, of course, after Jobs was ousted by the Apple board and slowly began its decline into irrelevance. Things have changed, of course, with Jobs back in charge and Apple on top, but sometimes we fans need to remind ourselves that things weren’t always this good. It’s important to know that it could all fall away again. → Read More
Looks like Microsoft is serious about this Windows 7 thing. Starting Monday, hardware makers will have to make their drivers compatible with Windows 7 as well as Vista to get that coveted “Certified for Windows Vista” badge on their gear. Seems kind of unnecessary right now, since 7 won’t be out for another couple years, but I guess they don’t want a repeat of the XP/Vista driver debacle. I’m more surprised that they have a build of 7 that the hardware testers can use to certify their stuff. We all saw the Windows 7 video last week, but is the OS really complete enough at this point that display drivers can be written for it? Luckily, that’s not really my problem. → Read More
We’re getting closer to the point where I’ll actually be convinced not to use my laptop as a media center. This Onkyo system has about half of what I’m looking for – it’s got a nice big LCD for displaying info it nabs from online, an 80GB hard drive, and a USB slot for loading stuff directly. It looks classy, and although the speakers are a bit anemic at 26W each, Onkyo is a good brand and I trust them to be pretty high-quality. Problem is, with 80GB of music you need a way better interface than a D-pad – this thing needs a decent touchscreen, or the screen needs to be a detachable controller so you can control everything from across the room. And what’s up with the supported formats? MP3, PCM, and ATRAC? What about OGG and M4A, or any of the other formats to which the discerning listener might have ripped their collection? Until these problems are remedied, I can’t see myself paying ~$750 for a system like this. Good day, sir! → Read More
There isn’t enough room on my DVR, not remotely. I don’t even watch that much TV, but my hard drive is small. Sure, there are ways to hack them to make them bigger but I like to do right by my TOS agreements, so I don’t. But now that Hitachi has released the 500GB CinemaStar 3.5-inch HDDs, I’m considering it. They’re made to run quiet, specifically for devices like set-top boxes. You want to hear Kate and Jack argue about Locke, not your hard drive spinning. The drives are also low-power and feature CoolSpin, which means it spins up faster when activated. That gets you your TV faster. They ship in June, and at that point I’m going to have to think about upgrading my DVR or just admitting I’ll never get caught up on Galactica. → Read More
Back in the day, the cool thing to do was to modify your lower-end Radeon 9800 into a 9800Pro, or at least something like it, by essentially drawing on it with a pencil. Well, here’s a sequel that might actually apply to you. If you have a certain kind of Geforce 9600 (like this one), all you have to do is flash the BIOS and it rejiggers the card to unlock the unused shader units and the 2 memory units that are deactivated; basically you’re adding 128MB of RAM and some extra hardware pipelines completely by software. It ends up increasing performance by quite a bit. Pretty awesome, huh? Unfortunately, the card it works on is not very common, but it’s good to know these kinds of quickie mods are still viable. Here’s the original guide in Chinese, if you like that kind of thing. → Read More
Yesterday I had a moment of panic when I dropped my main mobile phone — Helio’s Ocean — into a mug of hot, steamy coffee. It got wet. Yes, there’s irony in the name, thanks. The phone freaked out. The Ocean’s a tank, it’s taken some abuse in its time, but I’ve always kept it dry. Eventually it dried out and now it’s working fine, but if I continue wetting my phones I might want to look at the new Fujitsus for Asia. The Fuj has a new handset — the F706i — that’s waterproof. While we’ve seen waterproof phones before, this one boasts digital TV and very fast HSDPA 3G connectivity. Yes, you can now watch porn in the pool. We’re actually into the idea of making phones waterproof, as it’s not that hard. A rubberized casing around the entire thing should do the trick nicely. Have you ever talked on the phone in the shower? Admit it, you have. → Read More
TGDaily reports that the Atom-based Eee PC will be coming next week, but they seem rightly skeptical of the little guy. After all, at $650 it’s no longer that cheap (you could get a used MacBook for that price), and not only is the performance not really up to par but it’s a certainty that dual-core Atoms are forthcoming in just a few months so your investment in the chipset would be unwise at this point. As much as I like the Eee PC, this doesn’t seem like a winning flavor. → Read More
This isn’t for me, but my parents might be into it. It’s a CD carousel that holds up to 150 CDs. It plugs into your PC via USB and plays via iTunes or the jukebox software of your choice. It doesn’t rip them, but instead acts as a jukebox with your PC as the interface. Interesting, but I don’t get it. We’re guessing the RIAA is sending these out as Xmas bonuses this year. And for $130, we’d rather just rip it all to our iPods. → Read More
Lately Twitter has been cleaning house, raising money, doing interviews and actually talking to users. In a blog post last week they did a Q&A session, directly answering questions about Twitter’s architecture. So I have a couple of questions, too, based on a couple of discussions I’ve had with people who say they’ve seen Twitter’s architecture. Is it true that you only have a single master MySQL server running replication to two slaves, and the architecture doesn’t auto-switch to a hot backup when the master goes down? Do you really have a grand total of three physical database machines that are POWERING ALL OF TWITTER? Is it true that the only way you can keep Twitter alive is to have somebody sit there and watch it constantly, and then manually switch databases over and re-build when one of the slaves fail? Is that why most of your major outages can be traced to periods of time when former Chief Architect/server watcher Blaine Cook wasn’t there to sit and monitor the system? Given the record-beating outages Twitter saw in May after Cook was dismissed, is anyone there capable of keeping Twitter live? How long will it be until you are able to undo the damage Cook has caused to Twitter and the community? Update: Twitter continues to be annoyingly and constructively responsive to criticism. They respond to this post here, saying “We’re working on a better architecture.” Kind of takes the air out of the balloon when you can’t get them riled up. CrunchBase Information Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Many of you are waiting — patiently, I might add — to find out when exactly Gears of War 2 will be released. It’s likely going to be an Xmas release, but the exact date has been unknown. The guy who does the voice of Cole Train in the game, though, has let slip that November 16 would be a day we’d have a ship date, or could even be the ship date. That’s a week and a half before Thanksgiving, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense. We’re guessing that’s when they’ll confirm a Black Friday release, just to make things more ridiculous on that awesome, hallowed day. → Read More
I like the idea: a jacket that is wired to shock anyone who grabs it with electricity whilst keeping the wearer safe from harm, but isn’t it — practically speaking — kind of silly? I mean, we have other deterrents that are just as effective, such as pepper spray, kung fu, and bodyguards. Do we need this kind of active clothing? What if you’re in a crowded elevator and it just goes off? And good luck getting it through a metal detector, pal. Still, for some people this might give them some sense of security if they’re in remote places or are expecting an attack. I guess there’s nothing wrong with making a buck off the paranoid. → Read More
Our sister publication Techcrunch UK noticed that a Location services API had been added to Google Gears. The developers behind Gears have been plotting out future API additions for a while, and those plans have included having Geo-data available to mobile app developers (see the spec here). We found out today that Google is backing up their Location API with a large effort to map out cell-phone towers and wifi hotspots, so that a user’s location can be pin-pointed more precisely. While some cell-phones have an internal GPS, the data is inaccurate indoors and not available on all devices. The other non-GPS method for accurate location data is to use the location of cell towers. Google can store the lat and long of a particular cell tower in their database, and when their software in the future sees that cell tower on a phone, they know exactly where the phone is. To boot-strap the database, both Google and Apple have been using a company called Skyhook, who drive around pin-pointing the location of cell towers. By using this method Google bypasses the need to have deals in place with network providers for positioning data. In addition to cell-phone towers, Google is also mapping out Wifi locations to form a large rogue base station almanac, which is used for both additional accuracy in location calculations, and also to point users to the nearest available access point. Once the database has been boot-strapped with initial data and launched to developers via an API, users of the service will further refine and improve the service by having devices submit information on towers and signal strength (along with location) back to Google. This means that over time, the service improves itself and will be able to work almost anywhere in the world, regardless of local regulations, network providers or restrictions. It is expected that the service and associated data will be made available for free to developers using Google Gears (specifically the new Windows Mobile version). For developers of mobile applications, it means that they now have a very accurate way of not only calculating a users position, but also an easy way to pinpoint other locations as a basis for a location-based service. There is also an effort to develop and define a standard API for accessing Location data and services in the browser. As with local browser storage, Google are leading the → Read More
Onkyo releases stereo system with HDD and featuring “floating technology” For seeding a single album, arrests made in OiNK BitTorrent tracker case: report Play golf at your desk with this new mouse and pad Scorpion logging machine will eventually kill us all Contest: Win History’s “Engineering Disasters” DVD set → Read More
The Google Checkout/Ebay Paypal wars continue. Ebay Australia currently allows merchants to accept credit cards, direct debit, money orders and checks for purchases, but from June 17 they want to allow only PayPal or cash on delivery. When the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) asked for public comments on the proposal a lot of of people responded. But an anonymous 38 page document that is highly critical of Ebay’s move was submitted on May 26, leading to speculation on who the author might be. It turns out, the title of the document, hidden in the PDF metadata, gave a very good clue “Microsoft Word – 204481916_1_ACCC Submission by Google re eBay Public _2_.DOC.” An Australian named David Bromage first discovered it. The document is still available on the ACCC’s website (and is embedded below), with the title stripped out. But the Australian newspapers are all over this now. Google’s competing product to eBay, Google Checkout, is only available to merchants in the US and UK, so they don’t directly compete yet with PayPal in the Australian market. Apparently, that hasn’t stopped them from trying to keep their options there open. In the document, Google says Ebay’s actions are anti-competitive, that the public benefits claimed by Ebay are “illusory” and that the proposal will result in significant public detriment. They also request that the ACCC ban Ebay from the action under the Australian Trade Practices Act. Will eBay retaliate? Last year they temporarily pulled all Ebay advertising on Google after they announced a Google Checkout party at an Ebay event. If they get that mad over a party, I can’t imagine how they’ll respond to this 38 page treatise on the evils of PayPal. The full document is below. And in other news, PayPal was finally able to fix that drop down menu bug that plagued users for over ten days and was ignored until the press and blogs started to pay attention. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/wrapper.ashx?doc_id=655991&swf_url=http%3A//content1.docstoc.com.s3.amazonaws.com/trimFile.pdf.swf&showrelated=0&showotherdocs=0&showstats=0&enableFullScreen=1Google Objection To Ebay AustraliaPayPal Proposal – Find Documents → Read More
Today’s Top Posts: Contest: Win History’s “Engineering Disasters” DVD set Mobile Me the new name for .Mac? aTV Flash hack shut down Play golf at your desk with this new mouse and pad CrunchGear live podcast starts in an hour Bill Gates wants you to lose your mouse Onkyo releases stereo system with HDD and featuring “floating technology” Space beer heading our way, courtesy of Sapporo For seeding a single album, arrests made in OiNK BitTorrent tracker case: report Google’s Android to get iTunes-like app store → Read More
Bloops! Those hackers who took over comcast.com yesterday were outted by Wired today. It’s a pair of industrious fiends who go by Defiant and EBK. They took over the comcast.com DNS records, redirecting the cable giant’s traffic to their own site. As it turns out, they were able to take over Comcast’s account at Network Solutions. They then contacted Comcast’s technical department to tell them what they’d done. Comcast hung up on them. Angry at being treated the same as any other Comcast customer, they edited the registration to point to their own servers. They expect to be arrested for their efforts. These guys are my kind of stoners, but let’s not mess with other people’s domain names, k? → Read More
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