Wikio Blogs - technology

[Technology] A 3G On/Off Option for the New iPhone? (Mobility Site)

Mobility Site — Sun, 11 May 2008 13:55:26 GMT

There was a post on Mac Rumors that a developer has activated an On/Off option that enables 3G speeds on the latest iPhone 2.0 Beta 5 distributed to developers. Evidently the preference is hidden and will not work on current iPhones … so dig deep for that new iPhone that is coming …. but be aware that enabling the option will most likely dramatically increase power consumption. I guess that is why there is the On/Off option so you can fall back to EDGE. Too bad there is not a bigger battery or better still, a user replaceable battery. via iPhone Alley --- Related Articles at Mobility Site: iPhone iPhone - A Guided Tour iToner Makes iPhone Ringtones Easy WebVNC - A Remote Desktop Creation LG Prada vs. iPhone

Mac Rumors : Latest iPhone 2.0 Firmware Has 3G On/Off Option ...
iPhone.best-blog.co.uk : Latest iPhone 2.0 Firmware Has 3G On/Off Option ...

blogs : Mobility Site,iPhone and iPod Touch Software,MacMike News,iPhone.best-blog.co.uk,Mac Rumors...
(5 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 15:55)

[Technology] Viewzi May Finally Have Won Me Over to Visual Search (Profy.Com)

Profy.Com — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:55:08 GMT

Apparently, Viewzi had its private beta launch when I was in San Francisco for Web 2.0 Expo, because how I missed it, I have no idea. I've never been a big fan of visual search , but I'm always willing to give it a try, going in with the expectation that I'll be doing a lot of eye-rolling. Viewzi was a pleasant surprise. Viewzi is a new way of looking at visual search: it realizes that not all searches are the same. Searching for blog posts isn't the same as searching for weather forecasts or online shopping or books or music or videos. In addition, not everyone has the same preferences when it comes to how they'd like to view things for each type of search. One person may like a plain vanilla search for blogs, while another might like screenshots, and a third might like thumbnails for results aggregated across more than one search engine. Viewzi recognizes this, and gives the user several different methods of visual search, allowing you to easily customize your search without being "stuck" in one method. The site works with all recent browsers (they list IE 7, Safari, and Firefox, although I used Camino for taking screenshots, and had no issues at all), and imagines how you might like to see more types of searches than you can probably think up right now. There are views designed to see search results as web screenshots, a basic photo view, a video viewer, basic text results for those who'd like to see the old-fashioned type of search, one with screenshot thumbnails aggregating results from four different search engines, a Reuters News View, one designed for shopping, a special photo view for celebrities as well as one for shopping for books on Amazon , a weather viewer (helpful if you are searching for information before traveling), and MP3 viewer, and (probably a direct kissing up for coverage) TechCrunch viewer, which allows you to search for information directly on TechCrunch. The nicest thing about Viewzi is that it doesn't assume how you want to see results.

ReadWriteWeb : Viewzi Takes Visual Search To Another Level ...
Texas Startup Blog : Dallas-based Viewzi Gets Attention! ...

blogs : Profy.Com,ReadWriteWeb,Texas Startup Blog...
(3 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 22:55)

[Technology] Scientists develop artificial mouth to study complexities of chewing, digesting (Engadget)

Engadget — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:38:23 GMT

Filed under: Robots Sure, we've seen a set of robotic chompers before, but a team of scientists led by one Gaëlle Arvisenet is taking artificial mouths to a new plateau. In a study set to be released in next week's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers report on the "design of an artificial mouth that mimics the first vital steps of human digestion -- chewing, saliva release and the initial breakdown of food." In order to ensure accuracy in the mechanical chewer, the gurus actually compared masticated apple pulp from human mouths as well as the robotic version; they reportedly scrutinized texture, color and aromatic compound release. Great, as if we really need our next humanoid servant to start begging for eats. [Via The Register ] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Neatorama : Scientists Make Munch-O-Bot: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? ...
Switched : Scientists Develop Artificial Mouth to Study Complexities of Chewing, Digesting ...

blogs : Neatorama,The Register,Switched,Engadget,[MobileRatty] Lattest Articles...
(5 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 22:38)

[Technology] Re: Microsoft pushes crippleware to defeat Linux (UMPC Buzz)

UMPC Buzz — Sun, 11 May 2008 14:25:28 GMT

On Sat, 10 May 2008 11:44:23 -0400, DFS wrote: > How can MS dictate anything to anybody? They offer a product for sale at a > price, maybe with terms/conditions, and the OEM is free to accept it or not. And Linux is free so how can a pay for product that is supposed to be inferior absolutely destroy in terms of desktop market share, a free product, Linux, that is supposed to be superior? > Oh I forgot: we're here in la-la land, where everyone is a victim of big, > bad MS. You nuts are like battered wives, except you imagine it all. They have to blame someone or something for Linux's inability to break the 1 percent of desktop barrier. > > >> http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...p_laptops.html > > "...the goal apparently..." > "...appears designed to ensure that distinction..." > "...[official]... asked not to be identified..." > > The bias in the article, and your shrieking here, is all just paranoid > speculation by MS-haters. And next month when PCWorld prints a not so favorable article about Linux, the COLA loons will be whining about a biased magazine. They twist everything to fit their warped view of Linux. > Once again, free Linux isn't competitive with paid-for Windows, and it makes > you wacks hysterical because you know it. They just can't accept that fact and they refuse to admit that Linux has a serious problem if it can't compete with pay for products. It's a total and complete embaressment to the Linux community when their free product gets trounced by pay for products. Open Office is another example. That one is even available for Windows and yet people still demand MSOffice instead. > You OSS guys need to write better code - the rest will take care of itself. > You can't honestly think OpenOffice and Gambas and Evolution and MySQL and > crappy kid's educational software will beat MS and commercial products? It > might do OK in the 3rd world, but anyone with money is fooling themselves > that there's any reason to run that OSS dirtware. The Linux co

Engadget : Microsoft's XP for low-cost PCs defines some boundaries ...
TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home : E-book-capable laptops with a catch from Microsoft: 80G drive limit and screens no bigger than 10.2 inches ...

blogs : TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home,UMPC Buzz,Engadget,[MobileRatty] Lattest Articles...
(4 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 16:25)

[Technology] AT&T Says Free WiFi for iPhones Will Come... Someday [Free Wifi] (Gizmodo)

Gizmodo — Sun, 11 May 2008 22:27:35 GMT

All AT&T's flip-flopping between offering free wireless at Starbucks and then taking it away—turns out it was some peon screwing up after all. An spokesperson for the company told the New York...

The Unofficial Apple Weblog : AT&T: free iPhone wifi is coming at some point ...
Gadgetell : AT&T's on again off again free Wi-Fi will come, eventually ...

blogs : The Unofficial Apple Weblog,Gadgetell,PalmAddicts,Gizmodo...
(4 posts, last update: 12/05/2008 00:27)

[Technology] SF fanzines prefigured blogs: Roger Ebert (Boing Boing)

Boing Boing — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:22:00 GMT

Roger Ebert traces the roots of Internet culture to science fiction fanzines: Then the university intervened, and I found myself publishing The Spectator (not precisely an original title), a weekly tabloid of arts and politics at the University of Illinois. I had become too busy for fandom, and found it wise to GAFIA (get away from it all). I have always been convinced that the culture of sf fanzines contributed heavily to the formative culture of the early Web, and generated models for web site and blogs. The very tone of the discourse is similar, and like fanzines, the Web took new word coinages, turned them into acronyms, and ran with them. Think about it. Science fiction fans in the decades before the internet were already interested in computers, big-time--first with the supercomputers of science fiction myth, and then with the earliest home-built models. Fans tended to be youngish, male, geeky, obsessed with popular culture, and compelled to circulate their ideas. In the reviews and criticism they ran, they slanted heavily toward expertise in narrow pop fields. The Star Trek phenomenon was predicted by their fascination years earlier with analysis of Captain Video, Superman, X minus One and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and there were learned discussions about how Tarzan taught himself to read. Link (via Making Light)...

Uncertain Principles : Weirdness Facilitation ...
Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine : Fanzines Beget Blogs ...

blogs : Uncertain Principles,Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine,Boing Boing...
(3 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 21:22)

[Technology] BlackBerry vs. iPhone (Daring Fireball)

Daring Fireball — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:25:11 GMT

There are no signs that RIM has the engineering chops on either side of the ball -- hardware or software -- to compete with where the iPhone is now, let alone where it's going to be.

NovaCiencia.com : John Gruber on Blackberry vs iPhone ...
CrunchGear : John Gruber on Blackberry vs iPhone ...

blogs : CrunchGear,Daring Fireball,Memex 1.1,NovaCiencia.com,[MobileRatty] Lattest Articles...
(5 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 08:25)

[Technology] Newsflash! Firmware 2.0 hints suggest Apple might be working on a 3G iPhone (Engadget)

Engadget — Sun, 11 May 2008 18:31:47 GMT

Filed under: Cellphones , Handhelds You'll never believe this, but it looks like Cupertino might be getting ready to drop a bomb this summer -- a 3G bomb, in fact! The latest beta release of firmware 2.0 for the iPhone has apparently revealed a preference screen that allows users of the new model to disable the 3G radio and fall back to GPRS / EDGE because the faster service "decreases battery life." Gotta pay to play, as they say. The ability to disable 3G service in favor of improved standby performance is a pretty common one in modern phones, so we're not surprised to see it here -- just a little disappointed that Apple hasn't incorporated enough fairy dust to magically make the problem go away. Permalink | Email this | Comments

Engadget Mobile : Newsflash! Firmware 2.0 hints suggest Apple might be working on a 3G iPhone ...
Mashable : Will Web-Craving Consumers Bite Big For Premium 3G iPhone Service? ...

blogs : parislemon,arnsteinblogg 2.0,iPhone.best-blog.co.uk,Engadget Mobile,Unwired View...
(7 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 20:31)

[Technology] Spotplex Suffers Identity Crisis, Stumbles Into DeadPool (TechCrunch)

TechCrunch — Sun, 11 May 2008 04:15:37 GMT

We introduced Spotplex in February 2007 as a potential Digg killer that served up popular stories by monitoring how many people read them. Somewhere along the way, it also turned into an Alexa-like analytics service. Unfortunately, neither market worked out for them and they've been forced to shut their doors. The Digg-style service used [...]

Webware.com : Spotplex can't find its groove, forced to close ...
Widgets Lab : Spotplex falls into the Deadpool ...

blogs : Unfortune,TechCrunch,Widgets Lab,Webware.com...
(4 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 06:15)

[Technology] oEmbed: An Open Format for Embedding Media (ReadWriteWeb)

ReadWriteWeb — Sun, 11 May 2008 04:39:30 GMT

oEmbed is a newly released spec from Cal Henderson (of Flickr), Mike Malone and Leah Culver (of Pownce), and Richard Crowley (of OpenDNS) that allows web sites to quickly and easily embed media when a user post a link directly to that resource. oEmbed is an open format which standardizes the process of embedding photos, videos, links, or other media and circumvents the media provider's API (or the need for screen scraping if they don't offer one). It works by turning a link to, say, a photo or video into XML or JSON that tells the user how to embed that media. "oEmbed is a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third party sites. The simple API allows a website to display embedded content (such as photos or videos) when a user posts a link to that resource, without having to parse the resource directly," says the authors on the oEmbed web page. As an example http://flickr.com/services/oembed'url=http://flickr.com/photos/bees/2362225867/ returns: 1.0 photo Bacon Lollys bees http://www.flickr.com/photos/bees/ 3600 Flickr http://www.flickr.com/ 500 375 http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3040/2362225867_4a87ab8baf.jpg Early adopters of the oEmbed spec are Flickr, Viddler, Pownce, Qik, and Revision3. Viddler has created a form to test the web service , so you can see it in action. Essentially, oEmbed makes it easier to access photos and videos with a simple URL. Standardizing how things are embedded means that, for example, a social network could allow users to simply embed media from oEmbed enabled sites just by entering a URL to a photo or video -- and the "customer" site wouldn't need to deal with multiple APIs from each provider.

Soxiam Wiki RSS Feed : oEmbed: An Open Format for Embedding Media ...
Widgets Lab : oEmbed:A Open Format for Embed Media (and Widgets') ...

blogs : Widgets Lab,Snipperoo,Soxiam Wiki RSS Feed,ReadWriteWeb...
(5 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 06:39)

[Technology] Three Reasons To Use Disqus (A VC)

A VC — Sun, 11 May 2008 19:23:03 GMT

First, I'd like to be perfectly clear that our firm, Union Square Ventures, is an investor in Disqus. So I am clearly biased about what I am about to say. Second, I'd like to point out that the reason we...

The Next Big Thing : Three reasons to use IntenseDebate ...
The Blog Herald : 3 Reasons to Use Disqus ...

blogs : The Blog Herald,A VC,mathewingram.com/work,The Next Big Thing,WinExtra...
(5 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 21:23)

[Technology] Vidnik (Official Google Mac Blog)

Official Google Mac Blog — Sun, 11 May 2008 05:22:48 GMT

By David Phillip Oster, Google Mac Team Vidnik is our newest application in the Google Mac playground . It's a simple program for using the built-in camera on your Mac to create movies and upload them to YouTube. You can use Vidnik to create a video diary, or just to quickly record a video comment to attach to an existing YouTube video. Vidnik works with the built-in video cameras on recent Macs, with Firewire video cameras, and with many USB video cameras. To use Vidnik, run the app, then click the record button to start recording. Click it again to stop. Trim to just the golden moments you want to keep, as in the screen shot above. Fill in the required title, description, and so on. Click the upload button. That's it. Or you can drag movies made in other programs onto Vidnik's column of movies, then click the upload button. And to use another program to do a little post-production, use the Gear menu to show Vidnik's movie file in the Finder. Edit the movie in the other program, then upload it.

Download Squad : Vidnik: upload Mac webcam videos to YouTube ...
The After Mac : Vidnik: Video Diaries In A Snap ...

blogs : Official Google Mac Blog,mac.ro,The After Mac,Download Squad...
(5 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 07:22)

[Technology] Gmail Security Flaw Spotted, Spam Filters Subverted (Mashable)

Mashable — Sat, 10 May 2008 21:07:31 GMT

A recently detected flaw in Gmail security could have spammers flooding users with lots of unwelcome messages. Joel Hruska of Ars Technica reports that a study from the Information Security Research Team (INSERT) indicates that there is a rather large security flaw in Gmail that could allow spammers to bypass all of Google’s anti-spam tools. [...]

Ars Technica : Security flaw turns Gmail into open-relay server ...
Fergie's Tech Blog : Security Flaw Turns Gmail Into Open-Relay Server ...

blogs : TechBlogger,[SecurityRatty] Lattest Articles,Fergie's Tech Blog,Ars Technica,CentOS, Linux and Operating Systems...
(8 posts, last update: 10/05/2008 23:07)

[Technology] Amazon Unbox content going HD on TiVo (Engadget)

Engadget — Sun, 11 May 2008 07:02:21 GMT

Filed under: HDTV , Home Entertainment We had a pretty good feeling this would go down eventually, but we certainly didn't see a confirmation (of sorts, anyway) coming this soon. Jim Denney, VP of product marketing at TiVo, has been quoted as saying that although the current version of Amazon Unbox can't process high-definition content, TiVo and Amazon will jointly announce HD capabilities "in the not too distant future." Granted, the content -- whenever it does actually arrive -- will only be accessible by "cable subscribers" with adequate bandwidth, but it's not like that's any sort of surprise. Sadly, details beyond what you've seen here were left out, but at least you can sleep soundly tonight knowing that high-def Unbox material is most certainly on the horizon. [Via Zatz Not Funny ] Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Engadget HD : Amazon Unbox content going HD on TiVo ...
Zatz Not Funny! : Amazon Unbox on TiVo Going HD ...

blogs : Zatz Not Funny!,arnsteinblogg 2.0,Engadget,[MobileRatty] Lattest Articles,Engadget HD...
(5 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 09:02)

[Technology] Making Mistakes and Amends in Blogger and Media Relations (PR 2.0)

PR 2.0 — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:43:27 GMT

In the rapidly shifting era of blogger and media relations, we can expect one thing to occur as we forge ahead, mistakes. It happens to the best and the worst of us. This isn't a generic post on how not to make mistakes, or if you do, how to apologize, per se. This is an example of true transparency and public soul searching that will hopefully help and inspire PR practitioners, journalists, and bloggers to learn from the mistakes of others – and hopefully work together when unintentional or harmless mistakes are made. Let's talk about transparency for a moment. You hear that word a lot across the socialmediasphere – almost to the point where it may be losing its original value and intent. Transparency = sharing the bad things as well as the good. Here’s an example of transparency in action: I blog passionately and incessantly about how to work with media and bloggers in ways that foster relationships and humanize the process of storytelling. I also run a public relations agency . It cuts deep when one of your own makes a mistake. Yes, I’m one of the louder voices on media and blogger relations, so there’s a sense of irony here when someone who works with me is the subject of this post. For this to be verbally called out to me, as if I already didn't make the connection on my own, well, it hurts. But, it's fair and I’ll take it on the chin. Nowadays, any mistake made in PR is really occupation hazard where one wrong move can cause a domino effect that has the potential to eradicate months or even years of hard work. In (their) defense, this person did not blast a generic media list generated through a PR database, nor did this person send information to someone who doesn't cover or write about products in the space. This predicament is representative of something many of us haven't really discussed, but it's worth exploring – as this is likely to occur industry-wide. So here’s the question: Is any form of unsolicited email considered spam even if you're sharing rele

Stowe Boyd's : The Growing Backalsh Against PR Spam, And The Rationale For MicroPR ...
PR Squared : Open Letter to Gina Trapani of Lifehacker ...

blogs : Unspun,Stowe Boyd's,POP! PR Jots,PR Squared,Marketing Roadmaps...
(10 posts, last update: 11/05/2008 22:43)