Author: Serkadis

In a post titled “Hello hypervisor, I’m geohot,” hacker George Hotz (already known in the iPhone community) has made a strong claim: that he has cracked the PS3. The system has remained (mostly) uncompromised for over two years now, with a few exceptions here and there. But, this one pledges full read/write access to the entire system memory and complete control over the processor — all without a mod chip. Has he really done it, if so how, and what comes next? That all remains to be seen. This exploit supposedly “isn’t really patchable, but [Sony] can make implementations much harder,” meaning he isn’t tipping his hat until he’s ready, because once he does the never-ending firmware update war begins, and as we’ve seen on the PSP, Sony can really knock out those updates.

[Thanks, Deepak]

PS3 finally properly hacked? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  On The Playstation 3  | Email this | Comments

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Article

Good news! Insomniac Games has been revealed to be making their next game, and surprise, surprise, it’s for the PS3. The revelation was made via a job listing. Check out what they’re looking for. Maybe you’re the

Google Voice is one of the most exciting products from the company at the moment. The service is still in a somewhat limited beta but it’s clear that 2010 will be the year when Google becomes a very powerful player in the voice communications market. Google Voice is slowly making its way into every product the company has to offer, it’s a default option in its Nexus One phone for example, and now the Google Chrome extension got a pretty big update adding much needed functionality like click-to… (read more)

Twitter already owns the real-time information game and now it’s making a play in another hot web trend, local info. Some users have begun noticing a new feature dubbed Local Trends, which does exactly what you’d expect: it lists the trending topics in your area as opposed to globally. Twitter has confirmed that it’s testing the feature but very few people ar… (read more)

The 46-year-old NASCAR driver from Grand Rapids, Michigan has signed an 18-race deal with Team Gill Racing for the 2010 Camping World Truck Series.

After going through a very serious accident back in June 2009 that sent him to the hospital with a broken collarbone, separated shoulder, three broken ribs, bruised lungs, a fractured wrist and third-degree burns on one elbow, the 2008 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion is determined to get back in the game.

Team Gill Racing will compe… (read more)

Watch out, Earthlings — Ariete’s 2,400 watt Auto-Lift iron is just a Stateside-release away from being Anthony Sullivan’s next big hit. The concept here is pretty simple (and pretty genius): users have to physically press down on the iron to make it touch whatever piece of wrinkled clothing is beneath, and as soon as they release pressure, the iron pops up to prevent accidental charring. It’ll set you back €65 ($92), but considering that one toasted dress shirt is probably far more expensive than that to replace, the forgetful among us should probably make the investment.

Auto-Lift iron won’t char your threads unless you tell it to originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 23 Jan 2010 05:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Wired  |  Auto-Lift  | Email this | Comments

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Article

There is a growing number of people who are claiming that search engines, in their current form, are obsolete and that their fate is sealed. People will start relying more and more on the information from their friends and extended social graph, on places like Facebook or Twitter, and search as we know it will become largely irrelevant. There is some trut… (read more)

Robert Downey Jr. and Beyonce Knowles are tipped to take the lead roles in a new remake of 1930s movie classic “A Star Is Born”. First released in 1937, the musical has been reworked twice in the past, with Judy Garland and James Mason in 1957 and Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson in 1976.

Actor-turned-director Nick Cassavettes is behind the latest version and has signed a deal with Warner Bros ahead of a 2012 release, reports Deadline Hollywood Daily. Downey Jr. and Beyonce are the favorites for the lead roles, playing Normal Maine and Esther Victoria Blodgett, aka Vicki Lester.

Blogger is one of the most popular blog hosting platform in the world. It provides a simple way of enabling anyone to publish to the web, this is true of any blog platform, obviously, and this is what most people use it for. However, there are those who prefer to have more control over their blogs but still use the Blogger platform for publishing. One way of doing th… (read more)

Here are the pictures of Beyonce attending the Hope For Haiti Now concert, a global benefit for earthquake relief, at The Hospital Club on January 22, 2010 in London, England.

01.22 – Hope For Haiti Now Concert

This looks really, really bad. An avid Facebook user named Harman Bajwa says that his Facebook vanity Url – Facebook.com/Harman – was unceremoniously revoked yesterday for violating Facebook’s policies. His new Facebook URL is the much less memorable facebook.com/profile.php?id=538612932.

Facebook then apparently did a sales deal around the vanity URL with Harman International.

The notice from Facebook (also in image at bottom of post):

Please Read This!
Warning

The username you selected was removed for violating Facebook’s policies. A Facebook username should have a clear connection to one’s identity. In addition, impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited. If you see other people with usernames that do not accurately represent their real names, it is only because they have not yet been removed for misuse.

To select a new username, please visit the following link:

www.facebook.com/username

Thanks for your understanding,

The Facebook Team

There’s just one problem. “Harman” as a vanity URL is perfectly appropriate as a username for someone named Harman Bajwa. Facebook’s VP Global Sales Mike Murphy has /mike, for example, much to my personal annoyance.

And while we’re on the topic of Mike Murphy, he may actually be the guy behind all of this. It turns out that the reason Facebook wants to take back that /Harman vanity URL may be more about money and less (much less) about policy violations.

That’s because Harman also received an email yesterday from a representative of Harman International, which is apparently “working with Facebook” to take the /Harman username for a initiative they’re doing around the Grammy Awards. They’re offering “promotional items” to Harman to hand the name over willingly:

From: Tyler Bahl
To: Harman Bajwa
Sent: Fri, January 22, 2010 11:25:21 AM
Subject: Harman

Hi Harman,

Thanks for accepting my friend request on Facebook.

I’m the emerging media strategist at Carat in Boston and I work on the Harman International account. We’re launching our first initiative in partnership with the GRAMMYS on Monday. Harman International is looking to obtain the vanity url facebook.com/harman for their Facebook fan page.

We are currently working with Facebook to reclaim (http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=896#/help.php?page=899) the username, but I wanted to explore opportunities to work with you to acquire the name. In the past, we have offered product in exchange for social domain names. One case in mind was for the new movie Avatar , we were able to give promotional items to the owner of twitter.com/avtr for Coke Zero.

Do you have time to connect today to discuss this opportunity in more detail?

Best,

-tb

We’ve reached out to Facebook PR for comment, although the evidence, unless fake, sort of speaks for itself. This is actually one of those times that I’m hoping that we’re being duped somehow, because telling users they’ve done something wrong when really all you’re doing is pursuing a sales quota is really, really distasteful. We’ll update with any comment.

Harman, to his credit, isn’t all that angry. “It would be great if I get my User name back,” he said in an email to me, adding that he’s working on a startup that will launch next summer.

Rest assured, Harman, we’ll be covering it.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

Through the automobile production and sales joint venture with Dongfeng, Honda plans to build a second automotive production plant in China. The plant is designed to have a low environmental impact and is scheduled to become operational in the second half of 2012.

The plant is scheduled to be built just four kilometers from the existing Dongfeng Honda plant in the Wuhan, Hubei Province, where Honda plans to acquire one million square meters of land. The joint venture company expects to achiev… (read more)

The United Nations estimated that in 2006, there were 688 million people over the age of 60 and that by 2050, this number would increase to two billion. Most old people live in Asia (54 percent). In 2008, the world’s median age is at 26 years old. This is expected to increase to 36 years old by 2050.

Branded products and services that appropriately talk to and engage this market is likely to be profitable. After all, a good number in this segment also have the buying power.

A search engine’s job is to let users find the information they are looking for as fast and as easy as possible. One way of doing this is, obviously, by providing them with the most relevant results and remove as many steps as possible between typing the query and landing on the wanted page. This is what Google strives for and why it puts so… (read more)

The Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based Penske Corporation announced it will reduce its stake in Penske Automotive Group Inc. from 40 percent to 35 percent. This will be done through a secondary offering of up to 5.75 million shares of common stock.

Penske Automotive is the world’s second largest automotive dealership group, operating some 253 retail automotive franchises, 40 different brands and 40 repair centers. The company has 110 franchises in Great Britain operated through the Sytner Gro… (read more)

We’re not even sure how to begin this piece. We mean, who on Earth would ever have thought of putting together a amphibious-capable car, powered by electricity? When did combining electric current with water made sense? If EVs are not quite feasible yet and amphibious cars already proved big no-nos several times in the past, why would an amphibious electric vehicles make sense?

Apparently, an obscure electric vehicle manufacturer from South Korea named CT&T was oblivious to all the above ques… (read more)

I’ve just changed my default browser from Safari to Chrome. The reason – the official Chrome Google Voice extension, which was updated on Friday. If you’re a Google Voice user (I’m possibly the most rabid one around, I even ported my phone number to Google) you’ll probably make the change, too.

The extension adds click to call functionality to web pages. So if there is a phone number on a web page, like a Yelp page or your online address book, it will now have a hyperlink. Click it and Google will throw you a pop up window asking which phone you want to use (home, mobile, work, etc.). It then calls that phone, and puts you through to the number.

I’m always cutting and pasting phone numbers from websites into Google Voice to make calls. And I’ve asked for web based click to call from the Google Voice team for months. Now we have it, all you have to do is use Chrome.

The extension also adds a small box in the upper right of the browser. You can type in a name or phone number and call or sms it from the browser, and read recent text messages and transcribed voicemails (Google automatically transcribes voicemails, usually horribly, but it’s fun).

The extension is buggy on Macs, and you need to use the most recent Chromium build, not the launched Chrome for Mac to use it. Download one of the recent builds here (most recent at the bottom). The extension should work fine for Windows Chrome users.

Google Voice doesn’t have an API, so third party applications need to harvest your user credentials to do anything useful with it. This Firefox add-on, for example, has nice click to call functionality but it requires that you give it your username and password. No thanks.

One last thing – it likely won’t be too long before Google is adding soft phone functionality to the browser directly via their Gizmo5 acquisition. At that point you won’t even need a phone any more. You’ll just be able to initiate and receive calls directly to your computer as you can with Skype and other services today.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article