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SatLav offers relief for Londoners | Technology | Reuters On Thursday, Westminster City Council launched a new text message service that will guide Londoners and tourists to their nearest public lavatory.
Anyone who sends the word "Toilet" to 80097 will receive a reply giving details of their nearest public convenience.
Global cell phone use at 50 percent - Yahoo! News Worldwide mobile telephone subscriptions reached 3.3 billion -- equivalent to half the global population -- on Thursday, 26 years after the first cellular network was launched, research firm Informa said.
But although mobile subscriptions have reached the equivalent of 50 percent of the population, this does not mean that half the people in the world now have a mobile phone, since Informa said 59 countries have mobile penetration of over 100 percent -- where some owners have more than one phone.
hField Technologies, Inc. The Wi-Fire is a compact, range-extending USB device that enables you to access a wireless Internet connection from up to 1,000 feet away--three times the range of your internal wireless adapter.
The Wi-Fire uses a powerful directional antenna, highly sensitive receiver and proprietary software to find and enhance normal Wi-Fi signals. With it you can connect wirelessly to the Internet faster and with a stronger signal than an internal wireless adapter can achieve.
AT&T Offers Free Wi-Fi Access in Southern California: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance To help California residents affected by the fires stretching across Southern California, AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T - News) today announced that AT&T Wi-Fi service will be offered free of charge at nearly 600 hot spot locations across Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Orange and Ventura counties.
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Residents will have free access to the AT&T Wi-Fi service 24 hours a day beginning tomorrow, Saturday, Oct. 27.
“We want to help residents in Southern California in any way that we can,” said Kieran Nolan, AT&T vice president and general manager, Los Angeles area. “By enabling free Wi-Fi at hundreds of AT&T hot spot locations, we’re hoping to provide families and friends with another way to stay connected — and to reconnect — throughout this difficult time.”
Password-cracking chip causes security concerns - tech - 24 October 2007 - New Scientist Tech A technique for cracking computer passwords using inexpensive off-the-shelf computer graphics hardware is causing a stir in the computer security community.
Elcomsoft, a software company based in Moscow, Russia, has filed a US patent for the technique. It takes advantage of the "massively parallel processing" capabilities of a graphics processing unit (GPU) - the processor normally used to produce realistic graphics for video games.
Using an $800 graphics card from nVidia called the GeForce 8800 Ultra, Elcomsoft increased the speed of its password cracking by a factor of 25, according to the company's CEO, Vladimir Katalov.
Free My Phone | Mossblog | Walt Mossberg | AllThingsD Whether you are a consumer, a hardware maker, a software developer or a provider of cool new services, it’s hard to make a move in the American cellphone world without the permission of the companies that own the pipes. While power in other technology sectors flows to consumers and nimble entrepreneurs, in the cellphone arena it remains squarely in the hands of the giant carriers.
A Life Revealed @ nationalgeographic.com
Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her eyes—then and now—burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist. Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened.
Internet preparing to go into outer space - Yahoo! News After expanding across Earth, the Internet is now set to spread into outer space to reach parts no network has gone before, one of its co-creators predicted Wednesday.
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Vinton Cerf said the proposed "interplanetary" Internet would allow people an ability "to access information and to control experiments taking place far away" from Earth.
Expanding into the solar system would bring new rules and regulations too, he told an annual Seoul forum, saying he and other experts were working on a set of standards designed to guide space-era Internet communications.
"Finally, the Internet can take us where no network has gone before," said Cerf, who is Google's vice president and chief internet evangelist,
Britain launches digital TV switchover - Yahoo! News Britain prepared Tuesday to begin the switchover from analogue to digital television broadcasting, with a seaside town the first to make the move.
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The BBC2 channel's analogue signal was to be switched off from around 2:00 am (0100 GMT) Wednesday in the northwest English resort of Whitehaven, affecting 25,000 households. The other analogue channels will be switched off on November 14.
Region by region, Britain is switching to digital broadcasting, due to be completed by 2012.
Every television set must be connected to satellite, cable or broadband transmissions, though the majority are already signed up to such services
Wilhelm scream - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect first used in 1951 for the film Distant Drums. Actor-singer Sheb Wooley is considered to be the most likely voice actor for the scream, having appeared on a memo as a voice extra for the film.
The Wilhelm scream has been featured in many films and television programs since. Alongside a certain recording of the cry of the Red-tailed Hawk, the "Universal telephone ring"[1], the Goofy holler and "Castle thunder," it is probably one of the best-known cinematic sound clichés.
FREE Hidden Electricity! - Instructables - The World's Biggest Show & Tell - art, craft, diy, food, games, home, life, offbeat, ride, tech [category: offbeat] This Instructable will show you how to tap into a FREE source of electricity! All you need is a phone line! All phone lines have a constant flow of voltage, around 40-70 volts (up to 100 volts when it rings!), but you can't just plug stuff into it and expect it to work. You can really mess with your phone system by doing that. I discovered how to do it the right way!
Gadget of the Day – MicroOptical MyVu - Portable entertainment - News - Stuff.tv - Earth's best-selling gadget magazine Most video viewing specs have the small hitch of cutting you off from the outside world by obliterating your view with their tiny screens.
Not so with this spanking pair fresh in at the Apple Store. While still not recommended for driving, they manage to prop themselves far enough up your delicate conk to give you half an idea of what's going on in front of you while you watch South Park.
Naturally, they’re designed to work seamlessly with video iPod; the battery pack doubles as a sturdy case for your player's protection and keeps the screen flickering for up to eight hours.
Audio's taken care of by the built-in, noise-reducing ear buds and an in-wire remote keeps you in control. And, of course, you can don lycra and pretend to be Lieutenant Geordi La Forge from Star Trek, which is always a bonus.
Nintendo to launch Wii Fit game | Tech&Sci | Technology | Reuters.com Nintendo Co Ltd said on Wednesday it would start selling its "Wii Fit" home fitness game in Japan in time for the critical year-end shopping season, sending its shares to a record high.
Nintendo's announcement comes just a day after Sony Corp said it would cut the price of its PlayStation 3 by 10 percent in Japan and launch a new, lower-priced PS3 model, to battle Nintendo's dominance.
The new game, which goes on sale on December 1 for 8,800 yen ($75), features a pressure-sensing mat called the "Wii Balance Board", which looks like a set of bathroom scales and can sense when a person moves and leans, enabling players to "head" virtual soccer balls and experience ski jumping on a TV screen.
The board can also be used for such activities as yoga and aerobics.
The new software is likely to be the next major sales driver for Nintendo's Wii game console after initial demand was stirred by popularity of "Wii Sports" software, which lets gamers play a virtual tennis match in the living room, analysts have said.
Bangladeshi develops humanoid robot from scrap | Tech&Sci | Technology | Reuters.com Move over Japan? A Bangladeshi graduate student is developing a robot capable of picking up objects, mopping floors and performing other simple tasks -- at the fraction of the cost of other humanoids.
Feroz Ahmed Siddiky of the International Islamic University in Chittagong says his "IRobo" responds to voice commands, has spatial intelligence and is cheap because it's made from scrap materials he's collected from electronic shops and car mechanics.
Senate blocks mandatory ID implants in employees - Los Angeles Times Tackling a dilemma right out of a science fiction novel, the state Senate passed legislation Thursday that would bar employers from requiring workers to have identification devices implanted under their skin.
State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) proposed the measure after at least one company began marketing radio frequency identification devices for use in humans.
The devices, as small as a grain of rice, can be used by employers to identify workers. A scanner passing over a body part implanted with one can instantly identify the person.
"RFID is a minor miracle, with all sorts of good uses," Simitian said. "But we shouldn't condone forced 'tagging' of humans. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy."
I4U News - Saitek Launches Obsidian Mouse Saitek has some pretty cool gaming peripherals including some rather interesting mice. The supermodel of their mouse lineup is certainly their new Obsidian wireless mouse. This little mouse takes a page from the Logitech G7 book and gives you two battery packs so you can mouse on and on and on.
Windows XP to be phased out by year's end despite customer demand | APC Magazine Computer makers have been told they'll no longer be able to get Windows XP OEM by the end of this year, despite consumer resistance to Vista and its compatibility problems.
By early 2008, Microsoft's contracts with computer makers will require companies to only sell Vista-loaded machines. "The OEM version of XP Professional goes next January," said Frank Luburic, senior ThinkPad product manager for Lenovo. "At that point, they'll have no choice."
Update: EMI to offer music without DRM through iTunes | InfoWorld | News | 2007-04-02 | By James Niccolai and Martyn Williams, IDG News Service EMI Group has announced a plan to sell its music online without copy protection technologies, a significant step that will give consumers greater freedom in the way they can listen to music purchased online.
The music without DRM (digital rights management) technology will also have a higher audio quality, offering a sound close to that of the original recordings, according to EMI. But it will also come at a higher price, with each DRM-free song costing about 20 percent more than current downloads.
The announcement was made at EMI's headquarters in London on Monday by EMI Group Chairman Eric Nicoli. He was joined by Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., whose iTunes music store will become the first online retailer to offer the DRM-free music.
WSJ.com In a dramatic acceleration of the seven-year sales decline that has battered the music industry, compact-disc sales for the first three months of this year plunged 20% from a year earlier, the latest sign of the seismic shift in the way consumers acquire music.
The sharp slide in sales of CDs, which still account for more than 85% of music sold, has far eclipsed the growth in sales of digital downloads, which were supposed to have been the industry's salvation.
The Lazy Guide to Installing Knoppix on a USB Key | tuxmachines.org Knoppix, the famous live Linux CD that practically started the live CD trend, needs no introduction to most people. One of the things that's so great about it is that you can take it with you and boot to a familiar Linux environment on almost any modern computer, without touching the OS that's already installed on it.
Of course, it can be even more portable when it runs entirely off of an inexpensive USB key. So let's install it to a 1 GB USB key, and create a persistent home directory in which to store files. Only let's do it the lazy way, and keep use of the command prompt to a bare minimum.
Yahoo to offer e-mail storage without end - International Herald Tribune Yahoo plans to offer unlimited e-mail storage to its roughly quarter of a billion users, starting in May.
The world's biggest e-mail service said Tuesday that it would scrap its free e-mail storage limit of one gigabyte, or about a billion bytes of data, responding to explosive growth in attachment sizes as people share ever more photos, music and videos via e-mail.
Microsoft has a two gigabyte free e-mail storage limit, while Google caps its Gmail service at 2.8 gigabytes.
"We are giving them no reason to ever have to delete old e-mails," David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo, said in a telephone interview. "You can keep stuff forever."
Tutorial Ninjas » Blog Archive » Hacking the Apple TV This guide will help you with the following:
* Disabling the Firewall
* Enabling SSH & VNC
* Playing xvid/divx encoded stuff
* Stopping Watchdog
* Running Applications(Firefox, Centerstage, etc)
* Installing Quartz
* Extra info.
What you will need:
* 1 Computer(pref. Intel Mac)
* a torx 10(for the case) and a torx 8(for the hard drive)
* A way to hook up a 2.5′’ hard drive to your computer(can be found at bestbuy or radio shack ask for a “2.5′’ hard drive enclosure”
* A method of SSHv1 into a box(linux and mac have built in, windows can use putty get Putty and pSFTP)
Xbox for your gun? | Technology | Reuters MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Police who have raided vice-ridden Mexico City neighborhoods in a push against drug violence hope to take guns off the streets by offering to swap them for computers and video-game consoles.
Launching the program Tuesday in the notorious inner-city barrio of Tepito, which police stormed last month, city police chief Joel Ortega said anyone who turns in a high-caliber weapon like a machine gun will get a computer.
Owners can swap smaller guns for cash or Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox video-game consoles under the plan.
Newly elected Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has moved quickly to restore order to the chaotic capital by going after well-known crime dens and clearing the city's narrow streets of informal vendors whose stalls have blocked sidewalks for years.
New "paint" provides wireless network protection without encryption Forget WEP and WPA; I’m switching over to the EM-SEC Coating System, a recently revealed paint developed by EM-SEC Technologies that acts as an electromagnetic fortress, allowing a wireless network to be contained within painted walls without fear of someone tapping in or hacking wireless networks.
The EM-SEC Coating System is clearly the most secure option aside from stringing out the CAT5, and can be safely used to protect wireless networks in business and government facilities.
“The use of EM-SEC Coating as an electromagnetic barrier for the containment of wireless networks has opened a new realm of possibilities for our company and for the future of wireless communications” said Robert Boyd, Vice President and Director of Technology for EM-SEC Technologies, LLC. “As hackers, identity thieves and even terrorists become more sophisticated in the methods they use to obtain information or inflict damage, this experiment confirmed EM-SEC Coating reduces the threat from electronic eavesdropping and blocks out electromagnetic interference for the protection of electronic data.”
GamePolitics.com » Blog Archive » Edwards Campaign Opens Second Life Office While not the first political hopeful to make an appearance in the MMO Second Life, presidential candidate John Edwards is the first to get a virtual campaign office.
Jerimee Richir, who goes by the SL handle Jose Rote, volunteered to purchase virtual land in Second Life, set up, and run the office as a grassroots effort.
Microsoft allows bypass of Vista activation Microsoft has built into Vista a function that allows anyone to extend the operating system's activation deadline not just three times, but many times. The same one-line command that postpones Vista's activation deadline to 120 days can be used an indefinite number of times by first changing a Registry key from 0 to 1.
CeBIT 2007 – Shuttle's upcoming Car PC :: TweakTown The "CarPC", an integrated device with a special designed power supply and thermo technology, features Shuttle's cross field design. Using car power supply, the system will auto shutdown after turning off the ignition key without losing data or system crash. Also, Shuttle's exclusive "fin flake chassis" radiate heat effectively. CarPC is not only for car use but also for difficult environments.
The interesting thing is that the CAR PC will be powered by your vehicles battery (11.2 - 32 volts). When you turn off your vehicle, the system will shut down properly without just powering off and hence save you from losing any data.
NetEquality Home : Meraki Mini Repeater in a Wall The Mini Wall Plug Repeater is a Meraki Mini housed in a commercial-grade plug-in case. The Mini Wall Plug Repeater allows quick installation with no holes in the wall, and offers theft resistance by securing to the electrical outlet. This is our suggested product for installing in apartment complexes, hotels, and public areas.
