Does your dental plan suck? Are you afraid of the dentist? If yes, then the Dental Microscope [JP], offered by Tokyo-based crap gadget specialist Thanko, might be the right choice for you. Similar to its lightoscope released back in April, this new microscope is a combination of a microscope and a light. Needless to say, there’s a USB port, too. → Read More
The Laptop Company, operator of a web-based shopping platform through its BongoBing website, has filed a request for an extension of time to oppose Microsoft in its efforts to register a trademark for the name “Bing” with the USPTO. Furthermore, The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board has effectively granted the extension request until October 28, 2009.
Here’s what BongoBing CEO and co-founder Raul Pellerano had to say about it:
“We have worked hard and invested significant resources in building our BongoBingTM brand and identity, our website and services, and our corporate identity. We believe it is important for a small company like The Laptop Company to continue to use its trademarks and conduct business without confusion in the marketplace.”
I expect many of you already were aware of this, but I can imagine at least some of you aren’t yet, so here goes: apparently you can lift the usage restrictions from Adobe PDF files by simply forwarding them as attachments to your Gmail account and opening them in HTML mode right from your inbox. That way, you can copy whatever the ‘secured’ PDF contains to a text editing program and do whatever you want with it.
For your reference: PDFs (Portable Document Format) can be encrypted so that a password is needed to view or edit its content, and they can also contain embedded DRM restrictions that provide further controls that limit copying, editing or printing. → Read More
British hacker Gary McKinnon has finally lost his latest High Court bid to avoid extradition to the United States to face charges for breaking into US military and Nasa computers in 2001 and 2002. After his arrest, and without a lawyer present, McKinnon admitted to hacking, but denies it was malicious or that he caused damage costing $800,000 (£487,000). The argument of his lawyers was not that he shouldn’t be tried, but that he should be tried in the UK and that his extreme Asperger’s Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, should be taken into account, especially since it could lead to suicide, if he was to be extradited.
He faces up to 70 years in prison if convicted in the U.S. of what prosecutors have called “the biggest military computer hack of all time”. He accessed 97 government computers belonging to organisations including the US Navy and Nasa.
Now, exactly what was this hack? McKinnon has always insisted he was looking for classified documents on UFOs which he believed the US authorities had suppressed. This is not a normal guy here. This is a mega geek who believed in UFOs. We’re not talking terrorist material. He’s been described as a 43-year-old “UFO eccentric”.
In fact McKinnon’s case reminds me very much of the story of John Forbes Nash, Jr., the subject of the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind. Nash was a mathematical genius who suffered from extreme paranoia – but his work on game theory ended up contributing to U.S. strategy during the Cold War.
Should Gary McKinnon therefore be left to rot in a U.S. jail for the rest of his life? Or should his skills be put to better use? → Read More
I have loved the iPhone, but now I am quitting the iPhone.
This is not an easy decision.
I was there in January 2007 when it was announced and I bought the first iPhone as soon as it was available. I happily bought the iPhone 3G a year later. I’ve proudly yelled “I Am A Member Of The Cult Of iPhone.” I’ve been an unabashed cheerleader for the device to all who’ll listen. And I’ve scoffed at developers who said they’d abandon the platform.
But I’m not going to upgrade to the iPhone 3GS. Instead, I’m abandoning the iPhone and AT&T. I will grudgingly pay the $175 AT&T termination fee and then I will move on to another device.
What finally put me over the edge? → Read More
Is it me or has nesting dolls jumped forward in evolution? It doesn’t seem like that long ago that the only nesting dolls you could find were either real Russian nesting dolls or a set of Tupperware. But lately, there seems to be all sorts of items masquerading as nesting dolls. → Read More
Good job, everyone! The DTV switch seemed to went well. The June 12 transition came and past on our end with little fanfare. Hopefully it was the same with you. Nielsen is reporting that the vast majority of US homes – 98.9% that is – can receive DTV signals. Kind of surprisingly though is that the under 35 demo is the least prepared with 2.7% unable to receive the digital broadcasts. → Read More
Leica is firing back over the criticism they’ve received lately about the price of their new flagship digital SLR, the S2. Internet pundits have rather, shall we say, catty about the price based on a rough glance at the specs, and Leica’s VP of marketing says that’s just not fair. → Read More
Perhaps with the benefit of hindsight, firing Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom as CEO in 2007 and paying out only 1/3 of the potential earnout wasn’t the best idea. Zennstrom seems to be holding quite a grudge.
eBay is developing new peer-to-peer software to run the Skype service, they revealed in a quarterly SEC statement.
The existing peer-to-peer software is controlled by Joltid, a company controlled by Skype’s founders Zennstrom and Janus Friis. The software was not acquired by eBay in its 2005 acquisition of the Skype service and is now the subject of litigation in the UK.
eBay is developing the new software in the event they lose the right to continue to license that technology, but warns that “such software development may not be successful, may result in loss of functionality or customers even if successful, and will in any event be expensive.” → Read More
I don’t have any info on these headphones besides that they are homemade and awesome. But what info do you really need? It’s not like you’re going to actually make some of these. And I’m guessing that if you have the skill to make these coconut cans with instructions, you can probably figure it out on your own anyway. Dau Gi Bach via MAKE → Read More
Well look at that, a BioShock belt buckle. And, if you’re handy with all sorts of machinery I’ve never heard of (read: TechShop), you can make your own. → Read More
OK. Did Microsoft just absorb Yahoo for zero additional cost beyond its oft-stated plans to spend some 10-15% of its budget on search per year? Did Apple really stifle innovation with its carrier-friendly App Store rules? And what’s common to both companies’ developer strategies? Yes, no, a lot. Working backwards, Apple and Microsoft offer their developer communities their favorite incentive — money. Seven million .Net developers come out of the Yahoo deal stronger than ever, with very few public comments from Yahooers hoping to move over to Microsoft like the ones that drowned out the proposed buyout phase of this deal. Back then, it was all about the complexity of integration of the Valley stack with .Net, and how ridiculous it was to think Yahoo engineers would work for or even with the Redmond crowd. But the Yahoo deal was never about Microsoft. It was about Google cleaning Yahoo’s clock, leaving it vulnerable to the takeover that’s been happening in slow motion ever since. The original deal was tied to a timetable designed to clear the Bush administration before it left office, and no one seemed to recognize how serious Ballmer was when that deadline expired. Given the trouble Google had with its subsequent deal with Yahoo, you might have a little more respect for Ballmer’s counting of the cards in the first phase. Now, with Google out of the antitrust argument and in effect validating the rationale for the new deal, Ballmer is sitting pretty. With Yahoo out of the search business, a two-horse race provides incentive for an attack on Google’s realtime challenges. It’s not so much that they don’t understand the stakes, but as with Google’s undercutting of Microsoft revenue streams, Microsoft doesn’t have to defeat Google in order to profit from a healthier competition for the efficiency of click-throughs. Just as television advertising is distributed across a four-network market regardless of NBC’s or CBS’s current status, so too will efficient results work across a 70-30 split. What does make a difference are the Web properties that house the ads, and that’s where social media and its follow clouds can make a big difference. Here’s where the comparison with Apple and its developer cloud begins to resonate. Every time we hear the outrage of an unfairly damaged App Store victim, our first inclination is to think there’s some fundamental flaw in the relationship between Apple and its → Read More
http://www.viddler.com/simple_on_site/fedc2ac7 Yeah, it’s not that exciting. via Joystiq Update: Looks like 1.4 is borking flash carts on the DSi. Uh oh. via Max → Read More
Do you have a MobileMe subscription? No? Oh. Well, if you did you could now download Apple’s iDisk application and send files to your friends and neighbors. The app browses your online iDisk and lets you view Office files and PDFs right on your phone. You can also send links to files via email. → Read More
By now, you’ve heard the horror stories. Developers put their heart and soul into building an application for the iPhone App Store only to have it rejected by Apple. And sometimes apps are at first accepted and then later pulled for odd reasons. And sometimes app updates are rejected, even though there isn’t much difference with the version accepted. We get a half dozen or so stories sent to us now every single day. It’s no wonder that a lot of mobile developers are growing wary of the App Store. But Steven Frank is not one of those developers.
Steven Frank doesn’t make iPhone apps, specifically for the reasons stated above. But he is a very popular Mac developer, that co-founded the OS X development house Panic, makers of the popular coding application Coda, among other apps. Frank is well-known in some circles as a Mac enthusiast. You know, the kind of person that is often derided as a “fanboy.” And that’s why what I’m about to tell you is surprising: He’s ditching his iPhone. → Read More
This guest post is written by Marcelo Calbucci, the founder and CTO of Sampa — a personal homepage creator that will be shutting down next month. He’s writing a series of posts about the lessons learned from the venture at http://blog.calbucci.com. He’s also the publisher of Seattle 2.0, a web resource for tech entrepreneurs and startups in Seattle.
Consumer startups are tough. You have two basic choices: A paid offering or a free offering (or freemium). If you charge people a penny, you’ll turn off the bulk of your visitors. If you offer free services, you might grow to be the next YouTube, Wordpress or Facebook. Most entrepreneurs are not risk-averse and the dream of being big is just too appealing and the majority of us take the “free-route”.
Once you offer something for free, all shades of people will try to benefit from your service. You’d think a service like Sampa with a strong family and baby branding would just repel small business, teenagers, criminals, etc. but that’s not the case at all. And I suspect most blogging services; photo-sharing or web-site building solutions face the exact same issue we did. → Read More
Looks like Fedor Emelianenko will, in fact, be in the upcoming EA MMA video game. Fedor, as he’s known to MMA fans, currently fights in M-1 Global, which is an MMA organization based in Russia. → Read More
So you’re sitting around looking at faucets like my buddy Sam was. And you happen upon a cool-looking faucet from Delta. It looks really pretty. Huh. But it’s $434.38. Why? You read on.
Suddenly you see something magical: “Start and stop the flow of water with just a tap anywhere on the spout or handle.”
Let me re-paste that: “Start and stop the flow of water with just a tap anywhere on the spout or handle.” → Read More
You might like to know that The Pirate Bay has been ordered to shut down in the Netherlands. That is, courts there would like to prevent people from inside the land of orange from accessing the site. Of course, The Pirate Bay, when they found out* about the case, denied all wrongdoing. → Read More
