Consumers will spend billions this holiday season on CDs, DVDs and machines to record and play the ubiquitous silver discs. But the inventor of the underlying technology won’t make a cent. Today, Jim Russell does consulting from a lab in the basement of his Bellevue home to keep in the game and supplement a modest pension from Battelle
British design engineer Glynne Bowsher and his team, the British Steam Car Challenge, have almost finished building a super-fast steam-powered vehicle reminiscent of the Batmobile. And this car puts a new technological breath of life into what is regarded as a traditional means of power
An all IPv6 backbone was launched this weekend in China. CERNET2 is the biggest next-generation Internet network in operation in the world and connects 25 universities in 20 cities. The speed in the backbone network reaches 2.5 to 10 gigabits per second and connects the universities at a speed of 1 to 10 gigabits per second
This week CleanSoftware.org was launched, a resource site with a unique goal: listing free, daily-use software that is free from spyware, adware, and other malicious/intrusive components
An image-scanner built into a light and bendy sheet of plastic that you can keep in your wallet has been developed in Japan. The credit-card-sized device will be powered by plugging it into a mobile phone, which also displays and stores the scanned images. It’s so flexible it can even scan curved surfaces such as wine bottle labels. With no moving parts or lights needed, its developers hope it could be on the market in three years’ time for just $10
A European court on Wednesday dealt a blow to Microsoft, ordering the company to start offering a version of Windows without a bundled-in media player. Bo Vesterdorf, president of the European Court of First Instance, said that Microsoft must comply with penalties imposed by the European Commission in March even as the company’s appeal wends its way through the system
Telstra has failed a test on the prices it charges rivals to access its phone lines for their broadband customers. In the first such test on the issue, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found that telcos weren’t able to generate sufficient margins to recover costs if they tried to sell broadband — or a combination of broadband and voice — to their customers over Telstra’s phone lines
Sydney wireless ISP Unwired has signed an agreement with AAPT that will see the telco reselling its wireless broadband service from next year. The deal represents Unwired’s first wholesale agreement with a major carrier, although it has previously cemented relationships with a number of smaller resellers, including Exetel, Veritel and People Telecom
Carlos Owens, an Alaska ironworker, is building an 18-foot-tall manned Mecha to fight at the local racetrack — and for the military, if they want it
A US federal judge has awarded an ISP more than $1.32 billion in what is believed to be the largest judgement ever against spammers
Optus has been asked to pay up to $17 million in alleged unpaid commissions to its former business partner in the international porn trade
The retarded monkey boy is drawing up plans to disable sections of the GPS network in the event of a terrorist attack, it seems the retarded monkey boy is of the opinion that terrorists don’t use maps and street directories. The rationale seems to be that it would prevent said terrorists from using the GPS system to direct some sort of attack. The plan would shut down access not only to the GPS satellite network, but projects like the EU’s Galileo. Ironically, this comes alongside the President’s plan to strengthen the GPS network against deliberate jamming
Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands have developed thin, flexible, photovoltaic cells. The thin and bendy solar panels can be stuck to fabrics, sheets or backpacks and promise a cheap, go-anywhere electricity supply
A survey carried out by PC Pro magazine looked at which of 100 home photo printers offered a better deal than handing your snaps to a photo lab. The tests found that images from top PC printers kept their colour longer than professionally produced photographs. In the report at the BBC it claims that the new generation of printers produced images with brighter colours and that were less likely to fade than many High Street developers or even some professional wedding photographers
The NSW Labor Government has approved the use of offshore computer programmers by the public service, in conflict with ALP policy. But NSW unions yesterday condemned any move by the Carr Government that would mean the development of its online licensing system or other departmental work being shifted offshore
Researchers from the University of South Australia have developed software which identifies specific bird species by their calls and then randomly chooses noises known to scare them, a development that could potentially save the fruit and wine industries millions of dollars
The tiny western African nation of São Tomé and Principe claims it has unwittingly become the continent’s electronic porn publishing capital after a Swedish company and its local partner sold the country’s internet identity without government approval. The government is demanding a share of the income earned from selling addresses using São Tomé’s .st suffix, after a US survey found they accounted for more than three-quarters of the porn pages generated from web sites that use African nations’ identities
Google will expand its ability for searching books by working with five major libraries, including those at the University of Michigan and Oxford University, as well as the New York Public Library, to digitise out-of-print and copyrighted works
Finally, a miniature hard drive you can drop on the sidewalk. Mini-drive specialist Cornice will unfurl a new 3GB, 25mm diameter hard drive at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show that offers more shock resistance and uses less battery life than its predecessors. The drive is due out in 2005
Yep you can buy a set of 6 socks for your iPod for 48 of your bucks. I suppose this seems like more value in comparison to iPod skins which are generally this amount and upwards. Oh and they’re colourful, the same colours that the iPod mini comes in, which kinda sucks if you bought a mini. I mean wouldn’t you want to deck your pod out in some other colour? Like purple or something? Although I suspect that’s what the colour on the end is suppose to be.
Link to one of those more expensive but cool iPod skins I was referring to: MacSkinz – Artist Series. They’d be even cooler if there was more variety in subject matter. Frank Kozik’s bunnies are cool though.
But if you did spend 48 bucks on 6 six socks you might not need to buy the iCleaner iPod Scratch Remover – Pro Kit.
Very unrelated aside: this is highly amusing.
RSS – Posts