Author: Serkadis

This motorized marble maze game replaces the usual steel ball with an M&M. It’s joystick controlled, and it reminds me of rats in mazes looking for cheese. But in reverse. [Project240 via Make]

If you look at the history of innovative societies and patents, you notice a clear pattern that after a burst of innovation, the firms that innovated begin to rely on patents to stop competition from outsiders who innovate. In other words, contrary to what patents are supposed to be for, they are often used to slow down the pace of future innovation, rather than advance it. Take, for example, the situation in Japan. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, of course, many American consumer electronics firms lost their edge to Japan — with many often accusing the Japanese players of “stealing” their technology. But what happens now, decades in the future, when South Korea has usurped Japan’s throne as the leading consumer electronics maker? Well, apparently it means that Japanese firms are focusing on patent battles with the South Koreans, rather than working on ways to innovate and offer better products for the market. Many believe that the Japanese consumer electronics firms need to seriously restructure and refocus, but at the same time the indications are that those firms prefer to concentrate on patent battles rather than taking those big and necessary steps. Once again, when companies can’t innovate to compete, they litigate.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Google has announced that it has begun rolling out file storage capabilities as part of Google Docs, bringing it more in line with services like Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive, though they’re not direct competitors just yet. The company says that regular users of Google Docs will soon be able to upload up to 1GB worth of files to the service for free, and in any file format imaginable. The idea is to allow easier file transfers between machines and enable more cloud-based collaboration between users, even with file formats that can’t be opened with Google Docs itself.

According to a post on the Official Google Blog, the feature will be coming to all Google Docs users over the next several weeks (as usual, the company is doing a gradual rollout). The maximum file size per file is 250MB, and if you want more than 1GB of total storage space, more can be purchased. Not only does this help eliminate the need to e-mail yourself files (which can be messy and confusing with multiple versions floating around), it also allows you to share those files on the Web with other users just as you would with any other Google Doc file.

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

Article

Late December saw the announcement that the A5/1 encryption technique used by GSM cellphones was vulnerable to a new attack, raising questions about how the cellular industry would respond. There was some thought that the transition to 3G service, which is already well under way, could be relied on to limit the risk of attack, as 3G communications uses a different encryption system. For anyone planning on that response, however, this week’s news is not so good: researchers have described an attack on 3G’s KASUMI system that requires only a few hours on a typical PC.

The KASUMI system is based on an encryption technique called MISTY, which belongs to a general class of techniques called Feistel encryption. These are rather complex, with multiple keys being combined, and a recursive, multiround encryption processes that alternates the order of different functions. A sense of the complexity can be had by looking at the diagram on a page that describes it.

Unfortunately, a full MISTY encryption is apparently computationally expensive, making it less than ideal for an application where time and processing power are in short supply. The KASUMI algorithm was developed specifically to simplify the MISTY system, and make it “faster and more hardware-friendly,” in the words of the new study’s authors. Supposedly, the simplifications didn’t reduce the security of the protocol, but the new research suggests otherwise.

The math behind the attack is rather complex but, distilled down, relies on sending multiple inputs through the encryption process that differ by known values, and look for pairs of pairs that show key similarities. These similarities allow the authors to determine when related encryption keys are being used, and then identify some of the bits in these keys. According to the paper, “our unoptimized implementation on a single PC recovered about 96 key bits in a few minutes, and the complete 128 bit key in less than two hours.” That should meet almost nobody’s standard of secure.

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

Article

Article Tags: [email protected], M. Paul Lloyd

For the last 6 years I have been looking after the BBC Focus Forum, recently revamped with new look layout and server bbcfocusmagazine.com/forum where we have discussed climate change in some detail, something I feel is a very important subject that should concern us all on every level

Climate change is a very important subject that should concern us all on every level. Our Planet is rather small and getting all the more overcrowded by the day so the future of our climate should be of considerable concern to all.

I have to admit to having been something of a global warming advocate, indeed some 5 years ago the relationship between rising global temperatures and rising CO2 levels were inexorably linked and so it seemed quite natural to accept that unless we made serious efforts to curb our CO2 output we ran the very serious risk of turning the Earth into boiling cauldron akin to a new age Venus.

Download PDF file to read FULL article by M. Paul Lloyd

Read in full with comments »

File attachment: Hello one and all by M Paul Lloyd.pdf
  

People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals is pulling an ad campaign that caught the attention of The White House for its illegal use of First Lady Michelle Obama’s likeness.

The ad — which also featured snapshots of Tyra Banks, Oprah Winfrey, and Carrie Underwood — was plastered in metro stations all over Washington, DC as part of the animal rights group’s Make DC Fur campaign.

Last week PETA defended campaign, saying it used photos of Mrs. Obama because the First Lady does not wear fur. “We haven’t asked the White House to fund or promote the campaign, as they can’t do such things, but the fact is that Michelle Obama has issued a statement indicating that she doesn’t wear fur, and the world should know that in PETA’s eyes, that makes her pretty fabulous.”

However, on Tuesday, the group confirmed that it is pulling plug on the Fur-Free DC ad. PETA has now turned its interest to urging Washington to take a stand against longtime foe Ringling Bros., which last week debuted its newest performing elephant, “Baby Barack.”

Well, technically the G4s were already dead, but Justin Adler certainly did not let them go to waste. Using guts from the old computers along with an ATI graphics card, he managed to create a very nerd-friendly piece of furniture.

[Justin Adler]

What the hell happened here? Needless to say, it took a pretty violent incident to do this kind of damage.

Speaking about his friend’s PS3, our tipster writes:

He had his PS3 plugged into an electrical source although it wasn’t running any games at the time of this. He plugged in his Psyclone HDMI cable from his Samsung 32-inch flatpanel tv to the PS3 when the sparks started flying. A flame actually shot up out of the PS3, and sparks were firing out of both ends where the HDMI cable met with the ports. The mess ended in 10 seconds when the cord melted off. Pictures included. We cannot figure out why/how this occurred. No breakers were tripped, no damage or discoloration to any wall outlets or other power sources. Only the HDMI ports.

We’ve seen our fair share of flaming laptops, cellphones and iPods—but this is the first time I have come across an HDMI fire. Unless there were fireworks strapped to the cable, this one is a mystery. [Thanks Chris!]

You’ve seen the print ad. Now take a look at the commercial for the debut celebrity scent from socialite Kim Kardashian.

“It was so much fun getting all glammed up for this shoot,” Kardashian, 29, blogged Tuesday, explaining the concept behind the ad. “I think the Old Hollywood theme with a modern twist is a perfect fit for my fragrance because it will make you feel glam, sexy and super feminine.”

Kim’s self-titled perfume goes on sale exclusively at Sephora next month.

Filed under: Gaming, Hardware, OS, Software, Apple, Snow Leopard

News is bouncing around today that the current test version of Mac OS X 10.6.3 has OpenGL 3.0 installed in it, and while it’s not completely working yet, developers are hopeful that this means Apple is pushing to have full OpenGL 3.0 support in place as soon as possible. What does that mean for us mere users? Better, faster graphics, and the ability to push the hardware we’ve already paid for to where it’s supposed to be. Most of the hardware sold in modern Macs actually has the ability to make use of OpenGL 3.0 (in fact, the current version is actually 3.2, and 3.0 was released back in 2008), but Apple’s never included it in the software.

It’s a strange thing, this hesitance Apple has to really push the graphics ability on these machines to the limit. They’ve kept things slower than they could be in other ways as well, for reasons we’re not entirely sure of. It just doesn’t seem like faster 3D is a priority for them — we’ll leave it up to you to decide whether that’s good or bad.

TUAWHints found of OpenGL 3.0 support in 10.6.3 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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

Read Original Article

Conan says ‘No!’

Conan O’Brien is saying “Thanks, But No Thanks” to NBC’s request to move The Tonight Show to 12:05 AM. The fiery redhead says he will not stick with the show — or the network — if the scheduled plan to bring Jay Leno back to late night proceeds. In a statement released to The New York Times Tuesday afternoon, O’Brien lashes out at the network for proposing the shift.

Without resigning from NBC, Conan says was presented with the request to have his show bumped by half an hour, in order to accommodate The Jay Leno Show, which the network is moving to 11:35 PM. But in his letter, Conan noted he would not accept the scheduling move.

“I sincerely believe that delaying ‘The Tonight Show’ into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting,” Conan wrote in his open letter to the “People of Earth.” “‘The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t The Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.”

Conan continued, “My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.”

Conan addressed rumors he could be headed to FOX.

“There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next,” he wrote. “My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work. Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.”

As BoomTown previously reported, VMware officially confirmed today that it was buying Yahoo’s Zimbra open-source email unit.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but sources said the price was well below the $350 million Yahoo (YHOO) paid for the start-up in late 2007.

Sources also said there is a large employee-retention element to the sale to encourage Zimbra’s 110 employees to make the move to VMware (VMW).

Under terms of the deal, which has been brewing between the two Silicon Valley companies for some weeks, VMware said it will “purchase all Zimbra technology and intellectual property. Yahoo! will have the right to continue to utilize the Zimbra technology in its communications services, including Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Calendar.”

A week ago, BoomTown reported that the sale of Zimbra was likely.

BoomTown had reported in late September that Zimbra was for sale by Yahoo, which has been targeting for “de-acquisition” assets that are not central to the strategies of the company’s new management.

Zimbra, as well as its small business and jobs sites, have been on the block.

One source I spoke to last week noted that the reason VMware was interested in nabbing Zimbra is that its execs want to expand “up the stack” from the Silicon Valley software company’s position in virtualization.

And Yahoo is no longer interested in running Zimbra’s white-label, open-source email commercial product, which serves the university and ISP markets. There, its main rival has been Google (GOOG).

VMware said the acquisition is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2010.

VMware to Acquire Zimbra

Company Expands vCloud Portfolio with Next Generation Email and Collaboration Software

PALO ALTO, Calif., January 12, 2010–VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Zimbra, a leading vendor of email and collaboration software, from Yahoo! Inc.

This acquisition will further VMware’s mission of taking complexity out of the datacenter, desktop, application development and core IT services, and delivering a fundamentally more efficient and new approach to IT.

Zimbra is a leading open source email and collaboration solution with over 55 million mailboxes. As an independent Yahoo! product division, Zimbra achieved 2009 mailbox growth of 86% overall and 165% among small and medium business customers.

Based on a modern, flexible architecture designed for virtualization and cloud-scale infrastructure, the Zimbra technology provides substantially lower total cost of ownership than traditional solutions. Zimbra products offer a full enterprise feature set, excellent interoperability with legacy email environments and have been deployed across small and large environments; as on-premise software at thousands of small and medium businesses, distributed enterprises, and as a hosted service at major service providers such as Comcast and NTT Communications.

“Over the coming years, we expect more organizations, especially small and medium size businesses, to increasingly buy core IT solutions that deliver cloud-like simplicity in end-user and operational experience,” said Brian Byun, Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Services, VMware. “Zimbra is a great example of the type of scalable ‘cloud era’ solutions that can span smaller, on-premise implementations to the cloud. It will be a building block in an expanding portfolio of solutions that can be offered as a virtual appliance or by a cloud service provider. We are excited to welcome the Zimbra team and community to the VMware family.”

VMware plans to support existing Zimbra products and open source efforts while further optimizing Zimbra products for vSphere-based cloud infrastructure, alongside Microsoft, IBM and other messaging and collaboration solutions.

Under the terms of the agreement, VMware will purchase all Zimbra technology and intellectual property. Yahoo! will have the right to continue to utilize the Zimbra technology in its communications services, including Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Calendar.

“The Zimbra technology has played and will continue to play an important role in our communications services products. The technology is core to Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Calendar and a key differentiator for these leading products,” said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president, Yahoo! “The customers and partners of Zimbra’s industry-leading product and successful enterprise business will be well served with VMware.”

The acquisition is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2010. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

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

Read Original Article

Google is adding some storage embellishments to its Docs service, essentially transforming the Web-based productivity suite into something akin to its long-rumored cloud storage service GDrive, though the company disputes that comparison.

“This is not the ‘GDrive’,” a Google (GOOG) spokesperson explained. “We’ve been continuing to expand on the types of files that can be uploaded to Docs. We started with documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Later we enabled upload, view and share of PDFs. This launch builds on internal work that we’ve been doing for some time.”

And, indeed it does. Up until yesterday, Google Docs was limited to office-type documents. Today, those limits are gone and you can upload any file you like as long as it’s not over 250MB. The service will provide up to 1GB of free storage, with additional space costing $0.25 per GB per year.

How that’s different from this description of GDrive culled from a 2006 analyst presentation escapes me.

With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including: emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc). We already have efforts in this direction in terms of GDrive, GDS, Lighthouse, but all of them face bandwidth and storage constraints today. For example: Firefox team is working on server side stored state but they want to store only URLs rather than complete web pages for storage reasons. This theme will help us make the client less important (thin client, thick server model) which suits our strength vis-a-vis Microsoft and is also of great value

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

Read Original Article

Brand advertising, the kind you’re used to seeing on TV and in print, isn’t nearly as big on the Internet as the search ads dominated by Google (GOOG). But that’s got to change, as marketers realize that traditional advertising works on the Web, too.

The above is an article of faith among a certain kind of Web publisher. And some of them are even paying for studies to prove that display ads–basically all the ads you see that aren’t part of search results–really do work on the Web.

Except when they don’t. That’s the unsettling conclusion that some research funded by Yahoo (YHOO) recently reached, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The study was produced by the Web giant’s Yahoo Labs, which has been getting new attention in the Carol Bartz regime and beefing up its staff of social scientists by “adding highly credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world.”

One of the new hires, economics professor David Reiley, tried to track the benefits of a Yahoo ad campaign on behalf of a retail chain. He found that the ads did work, but only for people born before Woodstock:

The research, conducted in partnership with an undisclosed national retailer, sought to accurately measure the impact of Internet display advertising across online and offline sales, by tracking people who had registered with both Yahoo and the store. The research found an approximately 5 percent increase in spending among those who had seen the ads–with 93 percent of those sales occurring in stores.

The potentially worrisome thing, however, was that among those under 40, the percentage was nearly zero. That could reflect the unpopularity of the particular retailer among that demographic. Or it could underscore a growing immunity to display advertising among the Web-savvy younger generation.

Yikes. I asked Yahoo for its take on the study and the company sent me a (not surprisingly) sunnier summary of the research. Some of its highlights:

Major Findings:
By combining a controlled experiment with panel data on purchases, we find statistically and economically significant impacts of advertising on sales.

We estimate the total effect on revenues to be more than eleven times the retailer’s expenditure on advertising during the study.
93% of the effect was on offline (in store) sales.

Persistence: The effects of the campaigns were persistent over time, meaning that the sales impact could be tracked for a period of time after the campaign ended.

Demographics: there was no significant correlation or differences w/r/t location (by state) or gender.

But there was a significant difference w/r/t to age: customers over the age of 40 were significantly more responsive to the ads in terms of sales. The largest effect came from senior citizens (65+).

Clicks versus non-Clicks: Though clicks are a standard measure of performance in online-advertising, we find that online advertising has substantial effects on those who merely view but do not click the ads.

We find that 78% of the effect in sales comes from those who view ads but do not click them, while only 22% can be attributed to those who click.

Count me among the group disposed to think that brand ads on the Web do work, by the way. But then again, I have a vested interest in this being true since it’s what’s supposed to keep me clothed and fed. I’d hate to see scientific proof that it’s all a pipe dream.

For a contrary perspective, funded by people whose interests align with mine, check out this study funded by the Online Publishers Association.

[Image credit: pedrosimoes7]

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

Read Original Article

Filed under: Truck, Ford

Ford hasn’t offered a V6 option in the F-150 since its best-selling truck was redesigned for the 2009 model year, but a report from our friend Mike Levine over at Pickuptrucks.com says that’s about to change. Levine cites sources at the Blue Oval who say the same Ti-VCT 3.7-liter V6 (shown at right) that will power the 2011 Mustang and Lincoln MKX will also be found under the hood of the F-150 by the end of the year. Levine tells us that the 3.7 will likely only be added to the XL and STX models, though there is a chance that the XLT could also get some fuel-sipping love. A V6 pickup will likely be a big hit with fleet customers as well as buyers who love trucks but don’t use them for towing or hauling.

The sources didn’t quote power numbers, but since the Lincoln MKX version will reportedly produce the same 305 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque as the one used in the Mustang, there is a good chance that Ford will simply copy and paste the same mill under the hood of the smallest F-Series. If the 3.7 does find its way into the F-150, we’ll be very interested to see the official EPA fuel economy numbers. We can’t see a 23 or 24 miles per gallon full size pickup with up to 305 hp being a bad thing.

[Source: Pickuptrucks]

Report: Ford porting 3.7L V6 into 2011 F-150 originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

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

Read Original Article

Filed under: Detroit Auto Show, Coupe, Audi, Porsche, Volkswagen

If you’re wondering what the likelihood of Audi building a production version of its new e-tron Detroit Concept Car (yes, that’s really its official designation), our sources at Audi indicate that a version of the coupe is likely to go into serial production as the oft-rumored R4.

The German automaker is apparently looking to design a smaller modular platform leveraging the expertise it used to develop the front-engine sedan platform that underpins the new A8 and forthcoming A7, among others. The new mid-engine architecture will likely find homes in a number of Volkswagen Group properties, including a production version of the Concept BlueSport, and perhaps even the next-generation Porsche Boxster/Cayman.

While the e-tron show car is a battery-powered electric vehicle, the production model is likely to be available with either an electric motor or conventional internal-combustion four-cylinder variants.

Given the fact that VW intimated last year that a production BlueSport could be produced at around $25,000, we’re anticipating that the Audi R4 will slot in under the TT in the low-$30,000 range, as the 2010 TT presently starts at $37,800.

Detroit 2009: Audi e-tron Detroit Concept presages production R4 originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

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

Read Original Article

Filed under: Aftermarket, Coupe, Performance, Ferrari

German supertuner Gemballa has just dispatched more intelligence on its wicked-looking, FXX-like customized Ferrari Enzo. The jet-fighter inspired Gemballa Mig-U1 was expected at the Dubai Motor Show but ended up a no-show. Just as well because we couldn’t make it to that show anyhow and now we have a batch of new pics and a press release to fill in the details.

The bewinged wonder looks somewhat like Maranello’s own FXX mated with an Imperial Stormtrooper. It features a number of Gemballa’s signature touches, including a roof scoop, jet-thruster-surrounds for the exhaust and black alloy wheels. There’s also a widebody kit featuring a restyled nose, ducted hood, extra vents up front and behind the wheels, fender-top gills and a massive rear wing. Gemballa claims these aerodynamic changes result in an additional 35 kilograms (77 pounds) of downforce at the front and 85 kg (187 pounds) at the rear.

The interior gets black leather and quilted red Alcantara with rosso piping and stitching. There’s also a revised center console and a new infotainment system featuring a 950-watt amplifier, seven-inch touchscreen, navigation, DVD changer and an iPod jack.

As good as all that might be, you probably want to know how much more power this tuned Enzo is putting out. Unlike another German-tuned Enzo we’ve seen from edo competition, the Gemballa Mig-U1 keeps the stock displacement and through a combination of ECU wizardry and a new exhaust system now puts out 700 horsepower. The suspension appears to remain OEM but the lightweight GTR Racing wheels are said to shave a full 16 kg (35 pounds) over the stock wheel set. That should make quite a difference in handling, turning and braking.

Pricing hasn’t been announced, but Gemballa promises at most 25 Enzos will get the Mig-makeover. Each of those hypercars will be customized and colored to the individual owner’s taste. The Gemballa Mig-U1 microsite shows some of the hues it imagines might look good on the Mig-U1 and although we’d probably stick with black, red, or white, in case you’re wondering what it might look like in green, orange or baby blue, they’ve got you covered as well. There’s a gallery of high-res images below as well as the full press release from Gemballa after the jump.

[Source: Gemballa]

Continue reading Gemballa Mig-U1 fully prepped for its next sortie

Gemballa Mig-U1 fully prepped for its next sortie originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

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

Read Original Article