Fujitsu's 12.1-inch T8140 tablet with SSD: 3.3-pounds, 11.3-hours
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Stalker remotely controls family cellphones, even when they're off
To use a TV news cliche, it's like a horror movie come true: three families from Fircrest in Washington State are being harassed by a unknown individual, who somehow has the power to turn cellphones on, send messages, and change ringtones. Over the last few months, the families have had calls that threaten death and violence against them, calls that tell the people what they're doing at that time, and calls that originate from the cellphones of other members of the family. In one case, the stalker changed the ringtone of a phone to say "answer your phone." According to one James M. Atkinson, an apparent expert in these matters who used to provide the CIA with advice in counterintelligence, the technical profficiency to pull off this level of stalking isn't that high: if the FBI can do it, why not some anti-social kid, right?
Mitsubishi's laser TV coming to CES
Frank DeMartin, vice president for marketing and product development at Mitsubishi, casually mentioned in a recent NY Times article that the company will be showing off its large-screen laser TVs at the next CES (in January, put it in your calendar!). As we mentioned in 2006, the new tri-laser projectors are said to have higher picture quality and a larger range of color than LCD or plasma screens, making them a bit of a threat to the status quo -- although currently it looks like the TVs will be promoted to the "premium" end of the market, thus waylaying any direct competition (save for the videophile crowd). Then again, since we'll all be getting these under the tree this year anyway, we're not sure what the big deal is.
NEC develops 8MP CMOS sensor for cameraphones
While LG's ambitious plans didn't exactly pan out in 2005, the idea of upping those megapixels in mainstream cameraphones sure is getting a lot of attention today. Shortly after Kodak announced its plan to unveil a five-megapixel iteration for future phones, NEC is hitting back with a development of its own. Apparently, the company is already shipping samples of a "system chip capable of processing cameraphone images at resolutions of up to eight-megapixels," which even includes "image stabilization circuitry as an option." Best of all, the CE131 sample device is priced at just ¥4,000 ($33), and hopefully that cost will diminish even further as mass production goes forward in October. [Warning: Read link requires subscription]
Corian Z. Island: taking kitchens to the year 3000
Convert Images, Documents to Adobe PDF via EMail Attachments
Just compose a new email message, attach document(s) that have to be converted into PDF and send the email to pdf@koolwire.com. The PDF file(s) should arrive in your inbox the next moment.
The big advantage is that Koolwire PDF converter requires no software installation and, unlike Google Docs or PDFOnline, you don't have to upload documents to any webserver in order to print them as PDF - just send them across as email attachments. PDF creation couldn't be simpler.
Best of all, you can attach multiple documents / images to the same email message and Koolwire will batch convert them into PDF. Don't think any free PDF writer software offers such a convenient option to create multiple PDFs in one go.
koolwire.com/ | Developer Blog | PDF Presentation
Save time with an upload manager
One software can rationalize those operations:prostock master. It manages very easily tagging and uploading on major microstock sites (8 of them so far). And because it uses Java it is Multi platform.
I wonder what will be the consequences if this kind of software get massively used. The market might be reshaped. Anyway this high growth market might still surprise us in many ways…
McDonald’s, Virgin Mobile, Part of Sweeps Scam, AG Warns
Jun 26, 2007 6:05 AM, PROMO Xtra, By Patricia Odell
The Nebraska Attorney General last week warned consumers about a fraudulent sweepstakes that appears to be sponsored by major companies including Virgin Mobile USA and McDonald’s.
AG Jon Bruning called the mailing “a new type of sweepstakes fraud that lists false sponsorships to deceive consumers into participating.”
In addition to McDonald’s and Virgin Mobile, the notices, which state that consumers have won tens of thousands of dollars, also appeared to be sponsored by Wal-Mart, Pizza Hut, Sears, Budget Rent-A-Car and Gap, the AG said.
However, an inquiry by the AG’s consumer protection division found that these businesses were not involved in the promotion, Bruning said.
The letter tells consumers that they must pay a “clearance fee” to receive the prize because the award money is bonded. A check from one of the “sponsors” is enclosed in the letter to cover the costs of the clearance fee. The consumer is instructed to deposit the check and send the money back to the sweepstakes organizers.
“The check is fraudulent, and consumers lose the money they send,” Bruning said in a statement.
One “sponsor” learned that checks for up to $4,720 were being written from one of its bank accounts and immediately closed it, Bruning said.
“If it seems too good to be true, it probably is,” he said. “Nebraskans work too hard for their money to lose it in a scam. Being skeptical and researching an opportunity is the best way to avoid falling victim.”Monday, June 25, 2007
Intel's Core 2 Duo E6750 revealed, benchmarked
Xerox Enters Search Market
FactSpotter is text mining software that combines a linguistic engine that allows users to make queries in everyday language. FactSpotter looks for the keywords contained in a query along with the context those words have.
According to Xerox, FactSpotter is capable of combing through almost any document regardless of the language, location, format or type; take advantage of the way humans think, speak and ask questions; and discriminate the results highlighting just a handful of relevant answers instead of returning thousands of unrelated responses.
Frédérique Segond, manager of parsing and semantics research at XRCE said that the tool is more accurate because it delves into documents, extracting the concepts and the relationships among them. “By understanding the context, it returns the right information to the searcher, and it even highlights the exact location of the answer within the document”.
Whilst it sounds appealing, FactSpotter will not be coming to a browser near anyone, anytime shortly. Xerox plans to launch FactSpotter next year as part of the paid Xerox Litigation Service platform and has no plans for a wider or public release. Here’s betting that a Steve Jobs character comes along and steals the concept and turns into the next Google; history often does repeat itself.
Instant Messaging: Google Talk adds Group Chat
Previously mentioned Google Talk Gadget has integrated a new Group Chat feature for your Google Talk contacts.
To use Group Chat, just start a conversation with a contact, then click the drop-down on the right of the chat window and select Group Chat. From there you can add as many contacts as you want. Granted, the idea of Group Chat is far from innovative (a lot of GTalk users have wanted this for sometime), but it's nice to finally see it rolling out. Group chat is currently only available with the Google Talk Gadget. Thanks Mike!
Google Apps: Add live Google data to Google Spreadsheets
The Webware weblog highlights 5 things you didn't know about Google Docs and Spreadsheets, most notably that you can insert live lookups in Google Spreadsheets via Google search and Google Finance.
Using two special formulas, users can create cells that will update constantly with data or information gleaned from Web searches or Google's finance service. This works for things such as stock symbols, sports statistics, or any other piece of information you want to source and keep up to date automatically
For example, you can insert the current price of Google stock in a spreadsheet by entering =GoogleFinance("GOOG"; "price"), or check out the number of internet users in Paraguay with =GoogleLookup("Paraguay"; "internet users"). Very cool.
Broadband Subscribers, 300 million strong
At the end of first quarter 2007, the total number of broadband subscribers was close to 300 million, and according to folks at Point Topic, we are way past that number by now. Thanks to strong growth in Eastern Europe and China, the broadband subscriber base is growing at much faster clip that most imagined.
Making Real Money from Virtual Goods
While the term evokes gold coins and magic items bought and sold in MMORPGs, conference attendance by social networks like Dogster and Hot or Not suggests how pervasive the concept has become. Virtual goods can also be gifts you send to friends on your network (as in Facebook), and it's an already growing income stream. Consider some highlights from the conference:
Three Rings' CEO Daniel James on Puzzle Pirates, a casual MMO: "We do about $350,000 a month in revenue, of which $250,000 is virtual currency sales."
Craig Sherman of teen hangout Gaia Online : "Virtual economy, we have about 50,000 completed auctions every day. Plus 12 virtual stores that are like an Amazon space, 6,000 items sold."
Dan Kelly from virtual currency exchange site Sparter, on the total value of the industry: "It's easily a billion dollar [secondary] market. Consumers have told us these things have value, the industry now is trying to reconcile that with their business model."
The question is why they have value, and Robert Scoble began the moderating of one Virtual Goods panel by noting a real Swiss watch that sells for $20,000—roughly $19,500 more than meaningful functionality and quality would ever require. With Hot or Not, users can buy each other virtual flowers, and according to CEO James Hong, intention drives the willingness to pay more: "We sell more expensive flowers to people that have a relationship."
Kudos to Mark Wallace and the staff of Virtual World News for taking such copious notes to the conference's many panels—read more here, here, here, and here. Be sure to also read the conference presentation– first in the West, I believe– on the phenomenal success of QQ , China's largest IM/games/social network, where you can buy virtual penguins as pets (54 million sold so far), with a virtual currency that's so popular, the Chinese government is worried it'll destabilize the official one.
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