Technology

CSS PNG Image Fix for IE

CSS PNG Image Fix for IE Nov 05 181 We’ve all seen them, the hoards of PNG fixes for IE6. That is because IE6 is a bag of smashed buttholes. I’m serious. It is. That is why we (web designers of the new world) have to continually come up with creative ways to solve the PNG issue. In case you are lost, just realize that in IE6, PNG images with transparency do not show their transparent regions, so you have to use some crazy IE6 proprietary filters. Moving on — via Komodo Media

Turbine-Free Wind Power


NY Times – Turbine-Free Wind Power from Antfood on Vimeo.

The wind panels are the brainchild of Francis Moon, a professor of mechanical engineering at Cornell University. He created a panel of 25 pads that oscillate in the wind, much the way leaves vibrate when a gust of air sifts through a tree. The pads attach to piezoelectric materials that produce electricity from each vibration — via The New York Times

Google fires back about search engine spam

The Google folks are taking issue over spam and the quality of Google searches which some have claimed has gone down in recent months.

Today on its official blogsite, the company’s Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer stated: January brought a spate of stories about Google’s search quality. Reading through some of these recent articles, you might ask whether our search quality has gotten worse. The short answer is that according to the evaluation metrics that we’ve refined over more than a decade, Google’s search quality is better than it has ever been in terms of relevance, freshness and comprehensiveness. Today, English-language spam in Google’s results is less than half what it was five years ago, and spam in most other languages is even lower than in English. However, we have seen a slight uptick of spam in recent months, and while we’ve already made progress, we have new efforts underway to continue to improve our search quality — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Six Apart Japan to be acquired by Infocom

We are happy to announce that Six Apart KK (SAKK), a Japanese subsidiary of SAY Media, has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Infocom, a Japanese IT company, as of 1 February 2011. As part of this transaction, SAKK will assume responsibility for the worldwide Movable Type business, and the Six Apart brand — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Twitter Sued By Celebrity Network

Micro-blogging service Twitter is being sued by a company that claims it had already come up with the idea for an online network of celebrities.

One of Twitter’s biggest appeals is that it gives web users a chance to get inside the mind of their favourite celebrities by reading updates about their daily lives. Whether it’s musings from Demi Moore, Aston Kutcher and Stephen Fry, or the likes of Katie Price discussing her divorce.

However, according to VS Technologies, Twitter infringes on its patent, which was granted in 2002, for a method and system for creating an interactive virtual community of famous people — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Duke Nukem Forever to Finally Ship Year Before World Ends

Everyone knows the world ends in 2012, so why not send if off in style, kicking butt and chewing bubble gum? You do still chew bubble gum, don’t you?

That’s right, Duke Nukem Forever will finally be with us, for better or worse, on 3 May 2011 (6 May 2011 worldwide). Publisher 2K Games and pinch-developer Gearbox Software (Borderlands, Brothers in Arms) announced the date this morning. The presumably irreverent first-person shooter will ship simultaneously for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PCs — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Revealed: how Vodafone dealers bend the rules posing as customers

A Vodafone dealer’s staff have been caught posing as customers to cancel the customers’ original accounts in order to sign them up for new contracts with higher commissions.

The staff members of Communications Direct Pty Ltd have also breached privacy by forwarding detailed customer call records outside the company — via redwolf.newsvine.com

New super-tough glass strengthens gadget screens

One of Japan’s largest glass manufacturers debuted on Thursday a new glass designed for smartphones and tablet PCs that is considerably tougher than conventional glass.

Asahi Glass said its Dragontrail glass is about six times as tough as typical chemically-treated soda lime glass and should be better suited to the rough-and-tumble life to which portable gadgets are subjected — via redwolf.newsvine.com