Any time there’s a prolonged power outage in warm weather, chances are that one of your first thoughts is What’ll happen to all the food in my fridge?
. Well, imagine if instead of a week’s worth of groceries, your unpowered refrigerator was full of vaccines, vital to the well-being of an entire African village. In rural third world countries, power failures are common, as are high temperatures – not a great combination for things that need to be kept cold. Fortunately, some aid agencies have the option of using a True Energy Vaccine Refrigerator. It can store US$30,000 worth of medicine below 10C (50F) in 43C (109F) ambient temperatures, for over ten days at a time, without power — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Spammers and scrapers of the world beware.
In a move that internet content creators have been dreaming about for years, web search giant Google has moved to crack down on spammy and derivative content that has been largely copied from other sources on the web and which somehow manages to bubble higher in results than the original — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Indian Blackberry users could face a ban after the gadget’s maker failed to meet a government deadline to grant access to all its services — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The UK government has announced that it is to look again at plans to block websites that infringe copyright — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In the estimation of the Sydney Peace Foundation, Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange stands alongside the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.
As he outrages and embarrasses world leaders by leaking secret US diplomatic cables – and continues to face down allegations of sex offences – Mr Assange has been chosen by the foundation to receive a rare gold medal for peace with justice.
The honour, previously given only to the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Japanese lay Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda in the foundation’s 14-year history, has been bestowed for Mr Assange’s exceptional courage and initiative in pursuit of human rights
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Foundation director Stuart Rees said today the Australian’s work had challenged the old order of power in politics and journalism.
Peace from our point of view is really about justice, fairness and the attainment of human rights,
Professor Rees told AAP — via richardfarner.newsvine.com
One of the things I love about working Google is that you can come up with an idea one day and the next day start getting to work to make it a reality. That’s what happened with the Art Project—a new tool we’re announcing today which puts more than 1,000 works of art at your fingertips, in extraordinary detail — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Even if the internet is down, people in Egypt can still use Twitter through a new service from Google and Twitter — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings. Bing doesn’t deny this — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Smaller and more energy-efficient electronic chips could be made using molybdenite. In an article appearing online 30 January in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, EPFL’s Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES) publishes a study showing that this material has distinct advantages over traditional silicon or graphene for use in electronics applications — via redwolf.newsvine.com
EFF has uncovered widespread violations stemming from FBI intelligence investigations from 2001 – 2008. In a report released today, EFF documents alarming trends in the Bureau’s intelligence investigation practices, suggesting that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Last week was crazy apeshit bananas. First, I launched my State of the Web comic where I requested that Tumblr used my TumblBeasts as a down time mascot. Four hours later I got an email from the founder of Tumblr, and subsequently my TumblBeasts became the new Tumblr 503 error page. They renamed them from TumblBeasts to Tumbeasts (I preferred TumblBeasts) and they now stand as the face of server failure on the Tumblr network.
After that, it got picked up by ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Business Insider, and CNN. Crazy apeshit bananas?
I THINK YES!
It is a most joyous day to be a cartoonist — via The Oatmeal
As the Rolex 24 revs up at Daytona International Speedway this weekend — one driver is being noticed for his unique driving abilities.
Mark Riccobono drives a specially designed SUV because he’s blind — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Ideally, a simple Google search will give you exactly the results you need. When it doesn’t, here are the best ways to tweak your web searches to help you get relevant results — via Lifehacker
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been a boon for developers and organizations that need large-scale code-crunching power but can’t or won’t shell out for the server racks. Unfortunately, those cheap, on-tap computing capabilities are an irresistible temptation to bad guys who can, for example, use EC2 to smash passwords in mere minutes for a handful of change.
A bulk email service called Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), the newest announcement from AWS, builds on that theme. When used for good — or at least legitimate — purposes, it gives companies and developers an inexpensive way to communicate with users via email. But it also plausibly equips bad guys with another tool for cheaply and anonymously perpetuating spam and malware — via redwolf.newsvine.com
We’re finding many useful solutions here at Macworld Expo, and among them is Dolly Drive. This new solution (they just launched this week) offers encrypted Time Machine sync to the cloud and even create a bootable version of the local drive you’ve been using for Time Machine thus far. I spoke with Anthony about the product, how it works and what the future holds.
There are three interesting things about Dolly Drive. First, it allows Time Machine to behave just like Time Machine. The primary difference is that your backups live out in the cloud instead of locally. The benefits are obvious. Let’s say you’re at a meeting in the field, only to realize that an important file is corrupt or missing entirely. If it lives on an external drive back in your home or office, you’re out of luck. Dolly Drive lets you restore it from the cloud, using Time Machine’s familiar UI, getting you back in business — via TUAW
It’s taken a while, but Google has finally caved in to pressure from the entertainment industries including the MPAA and RIAA. The search engine now actively censors terms including BitTorrent, torrent, utorrent, RapidShare and Megaupload from its instant and autocomplete services. The reactions from affected companies and services are not mild, with BitTorrent Inc., RapidShare and Vodo all speaking out against this act of commercial censorship — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A serious heart problem inspired UK engineer Tal Golesworthy to develop a device that offers hope not just for himself but for thousands of other patients with the same condition — via redwolf.newsvine.com
HTML is a standard dictated by browser vendors — not an independent body.
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Technically anyone can participate in the HTML standardization process, via WHATWG’s mailing list. But those who do so are known as contributors
, and their role is much like that of concerned citizens at a city council meeting. Actual membership in the WHATWG is an elite affair, however, and is by invitation only. Currently the total membership consists of three representatives from the Mozilla Foundation, two from Opera Software, two from Apple, one from Google, and one independent developer.
In effect, that’s who’s deciding the future of the Web: four of the leading Web browser vendors, all of whom have incentive to pile ever more features into their products to compete with alternative RIA (rich Internet application) platforms such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. (If you’re wondering where Internet Explorer fits into all this, notice that Microsoft is not a WHATWG member.) What’s more, Apple and Google are both prominent providers of Web content. But hey — surely they all have our best interests at heart, right? — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Vodafone Group has shut down cell phone service in Egypt after being ordered to do so by the government, which is under siege by protesters — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Facebook’s security team have reason to celebrate as they have claimed another scalp in the ongoing fight against spammers on the social network.
A post on Facebook’s Security page announced that this week a federal court has awarded the firm a whopping $360,500,000 in statutory damages and issued a permanent injunction against spammer Philip Porembski — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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