The tuatara, which is both related to lizards and snakes, is one of the planet’s oldest reptile species. It’s been living in New Zealand for about 200 million years. Scientists still don’t know much about their behavior, so they’ve asked Weta Workshop, a Wellington-based company known for its work on The Lord of the Rings
trilogy, to build a robotic male tuatara. It is equipped with cameras which will help the researchers to discover how real male tuatara attract and keep females. The goal is to help conservation managers to the genetically fittest, most productive males — via Slashdot
Three-dimensional maps from Google Earth are giving nonprofits new artillery in their battle to raise awareness of issues like deforestation and genocide. For example, Mary Ann Hitt, executive director of nonprofit Appalachian Voices, said a collective of grassroots organisations is using 3D maps in Google Earth to show how millions of acres of Appalachian Mountains across four states have been destroyed by mining companies. In a process called mountaintop removal, the coal-mining industry blows off the tops of mountains with explosives to get at coal faster and cheaper, she said. As a result, surrounding areas are buried by pollution and waste, streams dry up and a soot lingers in the air, she said. So with the help of Google, the nonprofit has built a virtual national memorial
for 470 topless mountains in the area — marked by half-staff flags — with information and guides on the process of mountaintop removal. The map layer, found in Google Earth’s featured content
, also shows historic before and after aerial photos of the mountains; overlay comparisons to illustrate the scope of destruction; and links to first-hand stories and videos from the communities affected by mountaintop removal
Flickr has said that its service is being blocked in China, although the Yahoo subsidiary did not directly blame the Beijing government, which aggressively censors the Internet of material it deems subversive. The blocking, which began Thursday, is keeping Internet users across a large part of China from viewing photos on Flickr, home to millions of snapshots of everything from birthday parties to beach vacations to nudes. The Web site also hosts a smattering of images that may be frowned upon by Chinese censors, including student protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989, which includes the famous photo of a man blocking the progress of Chinese army tanks, and bodies of students who were killed in the streets as part of a government crackdown
Germany will store digital fingerprints in addition to digital photos in passports as one of several biometric security measures planned to fight organised crime and international terrorism. All new passports issued from November will store two digital fingerprints in an embedded chip, which, since 2005, includes a digital photo, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior said Friday. While fingerprints will be stored exclusively in passport chips, photos will continue to be saved additionally in databases of local authorities. A new amendment gives police and other authorized government officials online access to these databases
Solid state drives (SSDs) have greater reliability and durability than hard disk drives (HDDs), because they have no moving parts. Data transfer rates can be faster, and booting a large operating system such as Windows Vista can be quick work for SSDs. In addition, they consume less power compared to HDDs, and they are quieter and lighter. But HDDs are still much larger in capacity, and their cost-per-gigabyte is a fraction of what it is for SSDs. SanDisk has introduced 64-GB SSDs that the company plans to have ready for shipment to manufacturers and to retail outlets by the end of this year
Microsoft has announced a cross-licensing deal with LG Electronics in which Microsoft grants rights to some of its patents, and in particular those patents that relate to Linux. Microsoft has said that Linux and related open-source software infringe on some 235 of its patents, a declaration that is adamantly opposed by members of the open-source community
Four more US internet service providers will start charging banks, e-commerce sites and other large e-mail senders for guaranteed delivery. In deals expected to be announced Thursday Goodmail Systems is expanding its CertifiedEmail program to Comcast, Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable’s Road Runner and Verizon Communications. Yahoo and Time AOL became inaugural participants last year. Individuals, businesses and organisations will be able to continue sending messages for free, but they risk finding those missives caught in increasingly aggressive spam filters. With Goodmail, a company can pay a quarter of a cent per message to bypass those filters and reach inboxes directly. Recipients see a blue seal verifying that the message is legitimate. Senders get confirmation and can resend messages lost in transit
Israeli scientists have taken a crucial first step in showing that a network of neurons outside the body can be stimulated to create multiple memories that they sustain for days. Researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel have demonstrated that neurons cultured outside the brain can be imprinted with multiple rudimentary memories that persist for days without interfering with or wiping out others — via Scientific American
Amnesty International has warned that the internet could change beyond all recognition
unless action is taken against the erosion of online freedoms. The warning comes ahead of a conference organised by Amnesty, where victims of repression will outline their plights. The virus of internet repression
has spread from a handful of countries to dozens of governments, said the group. Amnesty accused companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo of being complicit in the problem
There are no privacy issues with Google Street View, a Maps-based project that offers 360-degree panoramic views of various streets in cities around the US, according to Google Australia’s head of engineering. At the Google developer day in Sydney last week, Lars Rasmussen denied that privacy was an issue when it came to Google Street View because, he said, the images are all taken in public areas
The largest and most valuable collection of ancient Chinese art and artifacts in the world is being entered into the digital universe in Taiwan by museum curators and tech managers intent on freeing it from its physical boundaries. The goal is to make the massive collection available on the Internet. Researchers will be able to find rare documents in an easy-to-use database, teachers will be able to download information and images they can use in course work, and visitors will enjoy vivid exhibitions, films, music, access to favorite works of art and virtual tours
SixApart have released a new beta version of popular blogging content management system Movable Type. Moveable Type 4.0 is the first major release of Movable Type since MT 3.0 in 2004 and comes complete with a market disrupting announcement: SixApart will open source Movable Type before the end of the third quarter. The new version of Movable Type is a radical departure from previous versions
Scientists have set a new record in sending information through thin air using the revolutionary technology of quantum teleportation — although Mr Spock may have to wait a little longer for a Scotty to beam him up with it. A team of physicists has teleported data over a distance of 89 miles from the Canary Island of La Palma to the neighbouring island of Tenerife, which is 10 times further than the previous attempt at teleportation through free space
Palm’s financial future looks a little more secure as private-equity firm Elevation Partners said it will pump US$325 million into the mobile device manufacturer. The recapitalisation plan will see Elevation take a 25 percent equity stake in Palm, buying a new series of convertible preferred stock. The conversion price will be $8.50 per share, a premium of around 16 percent compared with the implied post-distribution price over the last 10 trading days. Elevation is a $1.9 billion private-equity firm and one of its five partners is Bono, the lead singer of Irish rock band U2. The investment in Palm is by far the largest the firm has ever made
For some time Mac users have been waiting to see who would bring 3D graphics to a Windows emulation/virtualisation solution under OS X. It looks like Parallels is going to be the winner. They have announced an RC of Parallels 3.0, with the final to be available in a few weeks
Solid state drives (SSDs) have moved another step closer to being a useful option for the enterprise, with Dell’s announcement of two new notebook PCs that feature SSDs as a storage option
A couple of former Yahoo execs are trying to create the next MySpace by aggregating fanfiction on a website called FanLib. But the fanfic writers recognised that exploitation was written all over the idea and they’ve refused to participate. Instead of creating the Myspace of fanfic since the launch two weeks ago, FanLib.com sparked a white-hot Internet firestorm. The meltdown is a hard lesson in how not to conduct business on the Internet. But it’s a firestorm of FanLib’s own making because, in spite of the Yahoo pedigree (or maybe because of it), they ploughed in like china shop bulls — via Slashdot
Google released a new Javascript API called Gears that makes it possible to write modeless web applications that will function offline. A browser plugin is available for IE and Firefox (OS X, Linux, and Windows), with Safari support planned for the near future. The plugin will need to be installed by users of Gears-enabled applications
Germany has just passed a new law that adds more anti-hacker
provisions to the German criminal code. Although the new rules are meant to apply narrowly to hacking, critics are already complaining that they may prevent necessary security and network research. The new rules tighten up the existing sanctions and prohibit any unauthorised user from disabling or circumventing computer security measures to access secure data. Manufacturing, programming, installing or spreading software that has the primary goal of circumventing security measures is verboten, which means that some security scanning tools might become illegal. In theory, this applies only to illicit programs like trojans, but some groups worry about how the new criteria will be applied
With great power comes great responsibility, and apparently with DRM-free music comes files embedded with identifying information. Such is the situation with Apple’s new DRM-free music: songs sold without DRM still have a user’s full name and account e-mail embedded in them, which means that dropping that new DRM-free song on your favorite P2P network could come back to bite you
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