Google announced the release of Google Pack, a free collection of essential software
. Along with Google’s own programmes, such as Google Toolbar and Google Earth, Google Pack contains Firefox, Adobe Reader, Ad-Aware and a six month subscription to Norton Antivirus. I would expect most geeks already have most of this installed already. I’m baffled by the inclusion of a resource hog like Norton, but at least you can choose to exclude it from the pack
A cow that escaped a slaughterhouse dodged vehicles, ran in front of a train, braved the icy Missouri River and took three tranquiliser darts before being recaptured six hours later. News of the heifer’s adventures prompted a number of people to offer to buy the animal — via Boing Boing
From the beginning to the end of his career, Ariel Sharon was a man of ruthless and often gratuitous violence. The waypoints of his career are all drenched in blood, from the massacre he directed at the village of Qibya in 1953
Microsoft has admitted to removing the blog of a Chinese journalist from MSN Spaces. The censored site has been re-hosted elsewhere after a short down-time, but is no longer accessible to the folks in China
Lego is now allowing you to design a model online, and then order a kit that contains the parts necesary to build it — via digg
US mobile records are for sale online to the general public. The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their mobile phone records are available to anyone — for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of mobile phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts. No court order needed, no credentials required. If they want your records and have the money, they get them
An ISP who successfully sued spammers in the past has now been awarded an $11.2 billion judgment against James McCalla of Florida for sending millions of unsolicited e-mails advertising mortgage and debt consolidation services — via digg
A boy in Canton, Ohio puts up a web page telling his friends to go to their school web site and hit refresh. Now the local prosecutor wants to charge him with a felony and threatens him with jail time, although prosecutors say community service is more likely and disciplinary action from the school — via Boing Boing
Last month Grant Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words by Border Protection
and carrying the official seal of the Department of Homeland Security — via digg
Futurama May Get New Lease on Life
Talks have begun at 20th Century Fox TV to revive Futurama, which takes place in the next millennium, much in the same way Family Guy
found new life after cancellation. The final original episode of Futurama
aired on Fox in August 2003. But since then, the show has found new life via DVD releases and repeatedly high-rated airings on the Cartoon Network — via digg
The Viktoria Institute in Gothenburg, Sweden, is working on a concept they call Push Music, which is software that enables peer-to-peer connections between music players, enabling people to browse
the music collections of others and take a copy of whatever they like — via The Raw Feed
Greenpeace has laughed off claims by a Japanese whaling organisation that the US Navy is spying on its protest ships in the Southern Ocean. The Japanese Institute of Cetacean Research, the group conducting the whaling and the real pirates, claims the information is being gathered for the US Civil Marine Analysis Department’s worldwide report on piracy
More than 500 General Electric employees have sued Monsanto along with two related companies, claiming they were exposed to toxic chemicals manufactured for decades by Monsanto
The UK government has been accused of compiling a national DNA database by stealth as police reported a rapid increase in genetic profiling
Australia had its hottest year on record in 2005, with meteorologists saying the rising temperatures were due to global warming. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said temperatures were on average 1.09°C higher than normal in 2005, making it the hottest year since records were first kept in 1910. Meteorologist Mike Coughlan said previous record hot years in 1988, 1998 and 2002 were caused by El Nino events, where warmer waters in the South West Pacific lead to lower rainfall and hotter weather in Australia. But there was no El Nino in 2005
Every year The Edge asks over 100 top scientists and thinkers a question, and the responses are fascinating and widely quoted. This year, psychologist Steven Pinker suggested they ask What is your most dangerous idea? The 117 respondents include Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Daniel Dennett, Jared Diamond — and that’s just the D’s! As you might expect, the submissions are brilliant and very controversial
The inventors of MP3 are taking portable music listening one step further with the introduction of two surround sound enhancements. Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits and France’s Thomson SA have added two new elements to MP3 Surround demonstration software: MP3 SX (MP3 Stereo eXtended), which enhances MP3 stereo files for multichannel playback; and Ensonido, which provides portable MP3 Surround sound using stereo headphones
eMagin has developed a wearable headset system, dubbed the EyeBud 800, that plugs into the iPod and displays video from it in front of one eye, using optical technology designed to give the picture a higher resolution and make it appear larger than on the iPod’s screen. Scheduled to debut in the first half of this year, the EyeBud is expected to retail for as much as US$599 — US$200 more than the cost of a 60-gigabyte iPod
Recent research conducted by Yahoo! and Ipsos reveals that while 12% of surveyed Yahoo users know what RSS is, only 4% of surveyed Internet users use it [PDF] and know they use it. Podcasting is also reviewed, with the conclusion that 2% of surveyed people use it. The increasing number of blogs should go with an increasing number of syndicated readers, as they are now an important part of the web
An unidentified man swore at crew and passengers after being refused a bottle of wine on the four-hour flight from Manchester to Tenerife. He became so abusive the fed-up pilot diverted the Monarch Airlines Airbus to Porto Santo island off West Africa. After the plane touched down, the man was marched off by police and had his luggage dumped on the tarmac. The plane and its remaining passengers then took off again for Tenerife, where it landed almost four hours late after the unscheduled stop — via Boing Boing
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