Archive for the World news Category
She’s gone from singing on Oprah’s show to doing a duet with Celine Dion in Madison Square Garden. Wow, a young, female singing sensation, what could possibly go wrong?
(penpengco, cherice, pempenco, New York City)
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Filed under: iPod
An unnamed insurance company recently stated that one in ten minor accidents are caused by headphone-wearing pedestrians, the Daily Mail reports.
Since headphones and earbuds have become louder and increasingly capable of blocking out external noise (especially those new-fangled in-ear buds), the folks who don them on the streets are frequently unable to hear traffic noise. This can result in a listener stepping into a crosswalk, oblivious to the oncoming truck forced to slam on its brakes. Not surprisingly, collisions are on the rise.
Although we haven’t heard any such reports yet, we’re confident that sometime soon, some iPod-listening jaywalker is going to be taken to the bank. [From: Daily Mail]
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Filed under: Cell Phones, Video Games, iPhone, Mobile Software
Another day, another independent developer gets shafted on the iTunes App Store. Today’s casualty? Developer Phunkware and its Tetris-inspired game, Shaker.
According to TUAW, the Tetris Company and Tetris Holdings LLC found the game to be too inspired by its titular cash cow, despite the somewhat intoxicating visual themes, inclusion of martini recipes, and unique “shaker” feature that rotated the blocks based on the iPhone’s accelerometer orientation. We’ll admit, the core gameplay is similar to Tetris, but honestly, the same could be said for any number of games and the classics they draw from.
In the current wave of App Store rejections and removals, it’s sad to see another application go the way of the Dodo — particularly one that has genuinely unique features to offer. And with so many apps being virtual clones of each other — games or not — the only real question left to ask is, “Who’s next on the chopping block?” [From TUAW]
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Filed under: Car Tech, Green Tech
Smart Cars are great: They’re fuel efficient and small enough to park in a spot barely big enough for a motorcycle. The problem? Smart Cars are just not very intimidating on the road. Hell, someone in a Hummer might not even see you in the lane next to them and just roll right over you.
We don’t know why it took so long to realize this, but the solution is obvious — put that micro-mobile on some monster truck wheels!
It’ll still get pretty good mileage, it’s still small enough to squeeze into the tiniest of parking spots, and now you’ll be able to crush that jerk in the Lexus who cut you off. Not that we encourage giving in to your road rage. [From: Wired]
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Filed under: Google
If you’re like us, at some point in time, you’ve come home alone after a long night of frivolity and felt, well… nostalgic. You stumble over to the computer, take a seat on that cable spool you keep around for a chair and launch into a long e-mail to your ex-girlfriend. You tell her everything you never told her. Everything. You wake up the next morning, drenched in sweat, head pounding, and a new piece of e-mail is in your in box. It says something about never talking to you again, or a potential restraining order.
Well, the good folks at Google have something for you. The new Mail Goggles application ensures that you’re in your right mind before you fire off that e-mail. Before you hit “Send,” a window containing five math problems will pop up. If you can answer all five problems correctly in the allotted amount of time, Google will deem your e-mail guilt-free and send it on. If not, well, you’ll be thanking them in the morning.
By default, Mail Goggles takes charge on late weekend nights. But, fortunate for graveyard shift workers who tie one on during the daylight hours, those time parameters are fully adjustable. [From: Gmail Blog]
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Filed under: Cell Phones
A storm’s arrival typically isn’t something to celebrate, but we’re going to make a notable exception here seeing how the BlackBerry Storm is less of a destructive weather pattern and more of an incredibly hot smartphone — arguably RIM’s hottest to date. Fit to its business-savvy roots, the long-rumored handset comes equipped with the most comprehensive global roaming capabilities of virtually any wireless device you’ll find anywhere, featuring EV-DO Rev. A, quadband EDGE, and 2100MHz HSPA for Europe.
Beyond that, the Storm becomes RIM’s very first touchscreen phone, mounting a 3.26-inch 480 x 360 glass display on a unique clickable surface so that the entire thing can be pressed downwards — just like a real button — for tactile feedback when making selections.
The phone also includes a full HTML finger-navigable browser, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint editing capabilities, Bluetooth 2.0, 1GB of on-board storage with an 8GB microSD card bundled in the box, 3.5mm headphone jack, automatic orientation and ambient lighting sensors, and a 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam with dedicated flash, making it a legitimate jack-of-all-trades that seems likely to be able to handle even the most chaotic personal and professional lives users can throw its way.
It’ll allegedly do 15 days of standby or 5.5 hours of talk time on either GSM or CDMA networks.
No word on pricing yet — we’re told all will be revealed “in the coming weeks” — but it’ll launch on both Verizon and Vodafone in November.
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Filed under: Audio/Video, TV
 There are a few day and date releases this week, but we don’t think any of them are the biggest title of the week. Sure ‘Sleeping Beauty‘ doesn’t fit in the Blu-ray demographic, it does mark a significant milestone in Blu-ray’s path to replacing DVD. In fact it marks the very first Disney Classic to be released on Blu-ray, which we’re sure will help more than one father convince his wife they need to go Blu. Next up is ‘You Don’t Mess with the Zohan‘, which although it looks down right silly, it is sure to be good for a few laughs. The rest of the lineup this week is all Halloween, all the time, as just about every studio goes into its catalog to release every horror classic we can think of. But if you think this is a big week, just wait until next week.
For starters ‘The Matrix Trilogy’ finally drops on Blu, but there are also plenty of other catch up titles from Universal and one or two more from Warner. Those alone would make some week for Blu, but we haven’t even mentioned the latest Indiana Jones movie which is sure to be a hot seller. While no one truly knows the future of Blu-ray, there’s little doubt that we will have a much better look into the future after this holiday season thanks to every studio throwing everything they have to make Blu-ray successful.
Blu-ray
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Filed under: Cell Phones, Green Tech
 Toshiba continues to tease us with its prototype liquid fuel cell-powered gadgets: last year it was a Gigabeat media player, and at this year’s CEATEC you can check out a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) that’s been crammed inside a cell phone, lending it a robust six hours of talk time (compared to the paltry three or four hours of a traditional battery). Toshiba won’t reveal the capacity of the DMFC, but they have said that a 50ml cartridge is good for about 15 refills. No release date yet, but the phone “might” be available “as early as next year.” In the meantime, enjoy this picture of a woman holding a flip phone with “DMFC” clearly visible on the display.
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Filed under: Computers
You know those insect-like micro air vehicles (MAV) we’ve been seeing? Well, the ExoFly aerobot is based on that camera-equipped DelFly design, only this time it’s gearing up for a trip to Mars — maybe even Titan or Venus. Turns out flapping-wing flight is perfect for the low-density viscous Martian atmosphere. The current prototype — weighing 17g with a wingspan of 350mm and flight time of twelve minutes — is being tweaked for use in future missions to Mars.
The folks at Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University, who’ve teamed up with Ursa Minor Space & Navigation, plan on increasing the weight to 20g and adding an on-board solar cell, which they reckon should extend the flight distance to 15km. There’s also talk of using the digital terrain and image data gathered to simulate a 3D immersive environment for detailed analysis of extraterrestrial destinations — hopefully viewable by those of us who don’t have the billions to drop on a flight to Mars. [Via New Scientist Space]
Continue reading Robotic Fly Will Go to Mars for Research Missions
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Filed under: Cell Phones, iPhone
The campaign of Barack Obama continues to show that it’s the more tech-savvy of the U.S. presidential tickets. The Obama campaign has released a pair of new mobile tools for iPhone-carrying supporters. In addition to a specially iPhone designed version of its Web page, there is now an Obama iPhone application that has a number of features to help motivate and organize supporters and volunteers.
The iPhone application access your contacts and reorganizes them so that contacts in battleground states are listed at the top, instead of simply using alphabetical order. The application counts how many calls you make through the app and anonymously sends the tally (but no other data) back to the Obama campaign. The app shows how many calls you’ve made and how many calls the application has been used to make nationwide, motivating users by making them feel like they are part of a larger community.
The application also can access the iPhone’s GPS to locate the nearest Obama campaign office and local events. It also comes with “issues” and “media” links, which delivers statements and videos of Obama’s stance on issues.
The McCain campaign responded by asking, “What’s an iPhone?” [From: CNET and USA Today]
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