December 2007
Australia Joins China In Censoring The Internet →
The Australian Government has announced that they will be joining China as one of the few countries globally that broadly censor the internet.
The Labor Party’s policy was announced prior to the Australian Election in November (release here) and was justified on the basis that the previous Government’s policy of providing free copies of NetNanny to all Australian households who wanted it didn’t...
Chinese gov't injects $20 bln into major state... →
BEIJING, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) — Central Huijin Investment Co. (Huijin), an investment arm of the Chinese government, signed a contract with the China Development Bank (CDB) here Monday to inject 20 billion U.S. dollars into the state-owned policy bank.
The investment, ratified by the State Council, would sharply raise the CDB’s capital adequacy and improve its risk-prevention...
Shanghai Expo's flying saucer set for take-off →
Shanghai yesterday started work on the performance center for World Expo 2010. Calling it an unique construction, Vice Mayor Yang Dinghua said the pavilion “will become the city’s new landmark of culture and entertainment.”
Located in the southeast of the Expo site, the Shanghai World Expo Performing Arts Center will resemble a flying saucer on eastern bank of the Huangpu...
Aussie shares to remain subdued in 08 →
Returns from Australian shares are expected to moderate to long term averages at best in 2008 as the fallout from the US sub-prime mortgage crisis threatens to push the world’s biggest economy into recession.
Optimistic forecasters expect a buoyant local economy, insulated from a significant but milder US downturn by booming Asia, to push a choppy local sharemarket about 10 per cent...
USB flash drive payment system hits South Korea →
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
We’ve definitely seen some outlandish attempts at improving or outright replacing the humble credit card, but South Koreans will soon be able pay for purchases using the most easy-to-lose system we’ve seen yet — by inserting a special USB flash drive into a slot. The system, which is being rolled out by Shinhan Card and VIsa, also lets users pay for...
Lucky is facebook developer :)
Tata Motors' $2,500 1-Lakh car gets detailed →
Filed under: Transportation
Remember that uber-cheap, almost entirely plastic car that India’s Tata Motors was working up? Turns out, the still codenamed 1-Lakh automobile is expected to launch in mid-2008 and get around 15 miles-per-liter, which should give the Maruti 800 some serious competition in the budget car arena. According to R. A. Mashelkar, a nonexecutive director on Tata...
Netscape finally bows out, browsers no longer... →
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
Although Netscape was once a mighty pioneer in the world of internet browsers, it didn’t take long for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer to overtake it and squash its dreams of market dominance. Granted, we highly (and we stress “highly”) doubt any viewers reading this now are relying on Netscape Navigator as their primary browser, but seeing it...
Creating a Backup for Your Google Account →
Using a single account for all the Google has a lot of advantages but if, for some reason, you can’t access the account or Google temporarily disables it, you lose a lot of important data. Fortunately, you can set up a Google account that should give you access to some of the information from your account. (You should also backup important data in other ways: download Gmail messages using...
Mossberg impressed by Dell's XPS One →
Filed under: Desktops
Turns out PC Mag wasn’t the only one fairly impressed by Dell’s entry into the all-in-one desktop arena, Unkie Walt is officially a fan, and while he won’t be giving up his iMac anytime soon, he had some warm things to say about the computer and Dell’s design direction in general. In fact, as far as actual hardware goes, Walt found plenty of things...
Predictions for Google's 2008 →
Some of these items are obvious, others are mostly wishful thinking. 1. Google will try to unify its application and transform them into a big social network. The Maka-Maka project (or Google’s activity stream) will enhance the already existing profiles. If Google doesn’t understand that your Gmail contacts aren’t necessarily your friends, we’ll see a huge privacy...
Santa's present for Real Steve: AAPL $200 →
Filed under: Apple Financial
Post-holiday investor confidence in Apple’s end-of-year performance appears to be high. Way high. Like, all time crazy high. Witness today’s intraday price peak for AAPL, rising above $200/share for the first time. There may be more upside to come with the quarterly numbers. Shaw Wu of ATR as quoted by the AP: “It’s looking like Apple’s...
Buy a 1080p BRAVIA and Sony Australia will toss in... →
Filed under: Displays, Gaming, HDTV, Home Entertainment
It looks like we’re going to have to postpone our move to South Korea momentarily as we jet over to Australia and clean ‘em out of PS3s. Sony Australia is giving away a free 40GB PS3 with every 1080p TV purchase in the XBR, X or W BRAVIA series of LCDs. The 40-inch W series starts at AU$2,999, while the 40GB PS3 retails for...
RIM developing angled Blackberry keyboard? →
Filed under: Cellphones
If you’ve been astounding friends and family with your thousands-of-words-per-minute typing skills on your Blackberry, RIM’s latest patent may come as a bit of a heart-stopper. According to “recent” filings from the smartphone manufacturer, a new style of keyboard is on the table which may move your familiar key placement into a slightly more...
Google’s Biggest App Distributor May Be Moving To... →
Indian IT services giant Wipro is said to be in “hectic negotiations” with bankers over financing a deal to acquire uber-consulting firm CapGemini for $7 Billion.
CapGemini became the largest distributor of Google Apps with a deal signed in September. Under the deal CapGemini collects a £25 licence fee for each install, plus additional fees for service and maintenance, and Google gets exposure to...
Happy holidays everyone!
turkey is in the oven
defrosting the turkey
Knight Industries Three Thousand specs revealed →
Filed under: Transportation
While you may or may not agree with NBC’s decision to make KITT a Ford Mustang in the new Knight Rider series, we’re pretty sure that you’re gonna tune in next February nonetheless if for no other reason then to see what modern technology can do to a talking, crime-fighting car. Well luckily Popular Mechanics has what is reportedly an exclusive spec...
In between holidays
Asus exceeds expectations, ships 350k Eee PCs in... →
Filed under: Laptops
We’re not exactly sure why, but we never really had a feeling that Asus wouldn’t be able to move a copious amount of these things. Nevertheless, DigiTimes has it that Asus actually sold through 350,000 Eee PCs in a single quarter, beating industry expectations by a solid 50,000 units. Also of note, the report mentions that Asus is planning to launch the little...
Army working in more Macs to diversify systems,... →
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
The Army’s been poking around with OS X for a while — Xserves have run army.mil for a couple years now — but it looks like it’s about to deploy even more Apple machines in an effort to diversify its install base and frustrate would-be attackers. The move is partially due to the upcoming release of software that will allow OS X machines to work...
Unofficial Wii Opera SDK let loose →
Filed under: Gaming
It looks like web browsing on the Wii is about to get a whole lot more interesting, as an entirely unofficial Wii Opera SDK has now been released to the general public, opening up the possibility for all sorts of browser-based games, among other things. What’s more, the SDK allows developers with the necessary know-how to take full advantage of the Wiimote, including...
RIP Think Secret →
Filed under: Apple Corporate, Rumors, Apple
Always provocative, sometimes right, often wrong, Think Secret was our scandalous favorite rumors site and now it is gone. According to the Settlement page listed at their site, Apple and Think Secret have ended their lawsuit and Nick Ciarelli has shut down the site.
Goodbye Think Secret, we’ll miss you.
Thanks everyone who sent this...
RIP Think Secret →
Filed under: Apple Corporate, Rumors, Apple
Always provocative, sometimes right, often wrong, Think Secret was our scandalous favorite rumors site and now it is gone. According to the Settlement page listed at their site, Apple and Think Secret have ended their lawsuit and Nick Ciarelli has shut down the site.
Goodbye Think Secret, we’ll miss you.
Thanks everyone who sent this...
WatchHere Comes Another Bubble - a “We Didn’t Start The Fire” parody by Richter Scale http://www.richterscales.com
Google Talk gets translation services (via robots) →
(Credit: Google)
Any jokes about Google becoming a self-aware, humanity destroying robot got a little closer to fruition yesterday. Google Talk (download the desktop widget), Google’s homemade Jabber-based chat client is now host to 24 (and counting) new translation bots that will take whatever text you throw at it, and convert it to the appropriate language. Each of the bots was built...
Translation Service for Google Talk →
Google launched translation bots for a lot of language pairs, even more than the ones available at Google Translate. To use them in Google Talk or in any other IM client that supports Jabber, you need to add one of the bots as a friend, start a conversation with the bot and enter the text you want to translate. Google’s bots have a simple format for addresses:...
Is this the mylo 2? →
Filed under: Features, Handhelds, Wireless
So we were doing some followup research on yesterday’s post about the upcoming mylo 2 Personal Communicator, when we happened to stumble upon the picture you see above, first posted in the beginning of October by qj.net. Part of an article sourcing someone claimed to be “close to Sony.” this supposed mockup of the second-generation mylo...
Start feeling the pain again - rub, rub, de-dub…
The medicine took the pain out, not fixing it - Damn !
Despite the result of x-ray tomorrow, my foot is feeling better - although still hurts, Oh - maybe the drugs…
just back from x-ray photo session - felt like a foot model :)
Sony's cookin' up a mylo 2 →
Filed under: Handhelds, Wireless
Well hello there, never-before-seen-device bearing the mylo name, nice to meet you. We can only assume by your camera-equipped backside (and your designation as the “COM-2”) that you’re the mylo 2 we’d heard rumors about — but no thanks to the tight-lipped FCC, we don’t know much more than the fact that you’ll be...
A FireWire story →
Filed under: Peripherals, Apple History
Once upon a time the Mac vs. PC debate found a kind of synecdoche in the FireWire vs. USB debate. FireWire had been invented by Apple way back in 1986 essentially to replace SCSI. USB 1.0 arrived on the scene in 1995 from Intel, Microsoft, and a few others. Somewhat ironically, however, it was the original iMac that gave USB a needed kick-start in adoption....
Upcoming FireWire spec revs things up to 3.2Gbps →
Filed under: Peripherals
USB 3.0 really threw down this September with a theoretical max throughput of 4Gbps, but it looks like FireWire isn’t going down without a fight. The latest and greatest FireWire version, dubbed “S3200” by those creatives up in marketing, uses the same ports and cables as FireWire 800, but boosts speeds to 3.2Gbps, which should make it pretty...
I am not as young as I thought I was…. :(
Fluid Is Great For People Who Are More Comfortable... →
One of the driving forces of Web 2.0 has been the concept of bringing applications that were once the exclusive domain of the desktop to the web. There’s no shortage of examples; online email negates the need for a desktop client such as Outlook or Mac Mail, Google Docs, ThinkFree and Zoho are suppose to negate the need for Microsoft Office. And yet many, many people still prefer their old...
Wii to eventually get voice support, hints... →
Filed under: Gaming
We’ve been hearing rumors about voice capabilities coming to the Wii almost from the very start, and it looks like plans are afoot at Ninty to bring the dream to reality: speaking to reporters during this morning’s rainchecks-and-shortages conference call, Reggie Fils-Aime sad that he “wouldn’t be surprised” to see voice chat come to the Wii....
Nintendo offers official downgrade to Photo... →
Filed under: Gaming, Portable Audio
Generally speaking, the reaction to Photo Channel v1.1 wasn’t exactly positive — especially when the MP3 faithful banded together to protest against the update’s newfound adoration for AAC. Thankfully, Nintendo has created an official process for downgrading back to v1.0, and yes, users who choose to take advantage will indeed have MP3 support...
iPhone a shoo-in for TIME's Person of the Year? →
Filed under: Cellphones
We tend not to make a lot of predictions around here, but we’ve totally got odds on TIME magazine’s pick for 2007 Person of the Year (and not just because we’re owned by the same parent-company). Since TIME already named the iPhone both Invention of the Year and, more recently, Gadget of the Year (along with devoting a fawning cover story to it), it...
Gmail Mobile Application, Now Available for Google... →
The mobile Gmail application for Google Apps that used to only work if you had a Blackberry is now available for all mobile phones. Just go to m.google.com/a on your mobile phone and download “Mail by Google”. The application looks exactly like the recently released Gmail Mobile 1.5, except that it has a blue icon and supports Google Apps accounts. You’ll also notice that you...
I am Nokia - connecting people :)
Toshiba launching SCiB batteries in March: 5 min... →
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
How does this sound: a battery capable of recharging to 90% in under 5 minutes while remaining useful for 10 years or more? Sounds like the stuff of jetpacks and food replicators right? Nope… March, 2008. It was a long, long time ago when we first brought you news of these so-called “Super Li-ion” batteries. In March of 2005 to be exact. Now...
Everex's Nanobook becomes the Cloudbook, gets gOS →
Filed under: Laptops
While we haven’t heard much more about the gOS laptop with the $300 price tag, word is that Everex will be equipping another portable model — the 7-inch, VIA-based, ultra-portable Nanobook — with a $400 MSRP and its Google-themed Linux OS. The device — apparently being referred to as the “Cloudbook” — is rumored to be launching at...
Tablet rumor roundup →
Filed under: Macworld, Rumors
MacRumors has put together this roundup, consolidating the rumors of an Apple ultra-portable macbook. I’ve made no secret of my wish for a double- or triple-size iPod-touch-like tablet but a 2.5-pound NAND-based Macbook sounds pretty appealing, even if the estimates are on the pricey side.
So what are your takes on ultraportability? Let us know in the poll...
Now that the Wii transfer works - I think I need to buy the software.
@wii Another Wii is a bliss
Office Live Workspace (Beta) Finally Goes Live. ... →
It’s painful to watch Microsoft wake up slowly to the threat posed by a growing gaggle of Web-based office productivity software, led by Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Back in October, Microsoft announced its intention to make Office Live actually revolve around sharing documents online (as opposed to the website-hosting and e-mail service that it was before). As a result, Office Live will now have...