Apple patents point to haptics, fingerprints, RFID
Three patent applications made by Apple were published on Thursday, covering technologies including haptics, fingerprint recognition and RFID. The haptic feedback patent, if approved,...
[3 Jul 2009]
by David Meyer
Friday 3 July 2009, 5:27 PM
Nasa hacker petition presented to Number 10
From Security Bullet In | News Blog | Sentry Posts | Add a comment
Tom Espiner Sting's wife Trudie Styler and Janis Sharp have presented a petition to Number 10 calling for Nasa hacker Gary McKinnon not to be extradited to the US. Styler, and Sharp, who is McKinnon's mother, presented the petition to Sarah Brown, the... more
Friday 3 July 2009, 4:22 PM
Software patents, and how to route around them
From Beyond the Code | 2 comments
Jonathan Bennett Microsoft recently used its patents on some aspects of the FAT filesystem to beat TomTom into submission, with the latter ending up having to change its products, pay Microsoft and license some of its own patents to it. It wasn't a good result... more
Friday 3 July 2009, 3:20 PM
PreSales Canabalize Retailers' Opening Day Sales!
From Home Server Projects | Vista Upgrade Blog | Homebrew Blog | Small Business Blog | Add a comment
Xwindowsjunkie (My attempt at writing a tabloid headline.) A Very Interesting Microsoft event just occurred. Microsoft is offering at a deep discount and through direct retail sale their FUTURE mainstay product. Since I deliberately avoid paying attention... more
Friday 3 July 2009, 1:51 PM
Increase Your Performance! No, I didn't mean it like that…
From Software application development | 1 comment
Adrian Bridgwater Usually whenever I get an email with a subject line that contains the term “Increase Your Performance” - I tend to file it under junk, spam and filth if it hasn´t been directed towards that route automatically. So it was only by a whisper that... more
Friday 3 July 2009, 7:45 AM
NoSQL and the monster mutation
From Mixed Signals | News Blog | Rupert's Diary | Add a comment
Rupert Goodwins Over in San Francisco yesterday, the brand-new NoSQL movement held its first public meeting. 150 bitwranglers from outfits large and small absorbed ten presentations about how to handle data in the new online world. (Disclosure: the meeting... more
Thursday 2 July 2009, 4:37 PM
Surrey, London and Peking get a yuan for spintronics
From Mixed Signals | News Blog | Add a comment
Rupert Goodwins Researchers from the University of Surrey, the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Peking University's Institute of MIcroelectronics have been awarded a £430,000 grant to get busy devloping silicon structures for use in spintronic devices.... more
Thursday 2 July 2009, 2:41 PM
Etymotic hf2 custom fit earphones
From Marginalia | Reviews Blog | Add a comment
Sandra Vogel It was way back last year that a guy called Andy Shiach came to my house and syringed a thick gloop into my ears. It was in a good cause. Andy is an ex musician who damaged his ears while playing. He has been an evangelist for protecting ears... more
Thursday 2 July 2009, 10:43 AM
Optical servers: at the heart of tomorrow's data centre?
From Back office | Uptime | Add a comment
manek Servers of tomorrow will be optically powered, and consume a fraction of the power they do today. This means less heat, less energy consumption and, of course, data centres whose compute power is -- well, not infinitely -- but orders of magnitude... more
Thursday 2 July 2009, 8:05 AM
WiFi vs. Mobile Broadband (HSPA)
From Jamie's Random Musings | On The Road | 1 comment
J.A. Watson I have to say first that I am mildly surprised to be writing this. I'm sitting in Starbucks, where I came to spend an hour drinking coffee and using their public WiFi access before going to an appointment (nope, no job yet...). I got my Fujitsu... more
Wednesday 1 July 2009, 5:13 PM
NYC launches municipal data mash-up contest
From Beyond the Code | Add a comment
Jonathan Bennett Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, has announced NYC Big Apps, an annual contest to produce applications using data from the City to increase access and transparency. The City intends to release a number of data sets covering various services,... more
Wednesday 1 July 2009, 4:22 PM
Zoho socialises Projects 2.0
From Product Central | Reviews Blog | Add a comment
Charles McLellan After a teaser campaign that mentioned integrated Zoho web-based services and a 'popular Microsoft product', Zoho has unveiled Zoho Projects 2.0, which brings together Microsoft Project and a collection of Zoho's online collaboration services. Billed... more
Wednesday 1 July 2009, 3:41 PM
HP Mini 2140 - I Get To Try One!
From Jamie's Random Musings | On The Road | Reviews Blog | Add a comment
J.A. Watson I have been wanting to get my hands on an HP Mini 2140 netbook ever since I read the first announcement for it. I already own an HP 2133 Mini-Note (wouldn't it be nice if they would be more consistent about naming/numbering similar models?),... more
Wednesday 1 July 2009, 1:40 PM
London launch event
From Countdown to Byte Night 2009 | Add a comment
Byte Night 2009 Last night saw the launch party for the London event when a great crowd of 93 potential sleepers converged on the BDO Stow Hayward offices in Baker Street. We were treated to a stirring speech from founder Ken Deeks followed by a viewing of... more
Tuesday 30 June 2009, 4:38 PM
Vodafone, roaming and the €60 beer
From Mixed Signals | News Blog | Add a comment
Rupert Goodwins The world of European mobile communications was not rocked to its very foundations this week, as 3 announced a £1.25/MB data roaming deal followed by Vodafone offering up £5 per diem/25MB max. Moble data roaming charges are fantastic. Truly.... more
Tuesday 30 June 2009, 3:37 PM
TV on your dashboard
From Marginalia | Reviews Blog | On The Road | Add a comment
Sandra Vogel First, a lengthy quote from the Mio Web site: “Wherever you go, the V505 TV’s 4.7" widescreen helps you get the most out of navigation and also gives you Digital TV in sharp detail*. The V505 TV auto-tunes itself, so you can find what’s on... more
Tuesday 30 June 2009, 2:17 PM
Gratification, instant and otherwise
From Web design & FOSS | 1 comment
Jake Rayson My brother lectures in music performance and technology at SERC in Bangor, Northern Ireland. We had a discussion the other day about the joy of simple programs that get beginners going, and onto the act of creation rather than the faff of... more
Tuesday 30 June 2009, 1:18 PM
More on Moblin
From Jamie's Random Musings | Reviews Blog | On The Road | 4 comments
J.A. Watson The Moblin steering committee has announced the "release" of the Moblin 2.0 Beta for netbooks and nettops. I have a couple of questions and comments about that, before I get into the last few observations about the software. First, what... more
Tuesday 30 June 2009, 11:06 AM
Plaintiffs sought in potential battery-life class action
From Communication Breakdown | News Blog | Reviews Blog | Add a comment
David Meyer A Californian law firm is looking for potential plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit over laptop makers' battery life claims. Girard Gibbs has put up a webpage referring to AMD's claims that "many laptop battery manufacturers calculate battery... more
Tuesday 30 June 2009, 9:34 AM
Windows Embedded: Seeds of Hope for Student Developers?
From Software application development | 2 comments
Adrian Bridgwater Back in 2003 when we all had travel budgets and that sort of thing, Microsoft would fly journalists out to locations like Brazil to cover the finals of its student developer competition which it calls the Imagine Cup. Although I missed the Brazil... more
Tuesday 30 June 2009, 2:13 AM
Windows 7 on a Read-only Flash Drive?
From Home Server Projects | Vista Upgrade Blog | Small Business Blog | Homebrew Blog | Add a comment
Xwindowsjunkie Considering that the price of a 4GB USB flash drive has been as low as 5 dollars on close-out specials, financially it wouldn't make sense UNLESS Microsoft decides to go into the Flash RAM business. The full Win 7 Ultra install DVD is 3.9GB... more
