Jul 22

Prankster Gets Verizon’s CEO Private Address, Visits Him to Discuss Privacy

Posted in: cellphones, privacy, Today's Chili, top, verizon, video

John Hargrave tracked down Verizon CEO’s private address and cellphone number. Then he went to his home—megaphone in hand—to ask him to stop Verizon’s lousy privacy policies. The video is quite funny and his message is clear:

When we don’t have privacy, then freaks with bullhorns start showing up. Keep our phone numbers unlisted. Keep our cellphone records private. Keep us safe in your loving arms, Ivan.

So damn right. To give you an idea about how easy it was to get this information, the only thing that John did was sign up for one of those “free cell phone records” listings and scan it for the cells and home addresses of the CEOs from the big three: Randall Stephenson of AT&T, Dan Hesse of Sprint Nextel, and Ivan Seidenberg of Verizon. There were a lot of Stephensons and Hesses, but only one Ivan Seidenberg. He confirmed the information and off he went in his car, ready to deliver his message about how important privacy is by showing him exactly how these awful information keeping policies could affect us.

Mr. John Hargrave, we love you. [Zug.com]

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Jul 22

Video: Google Wave public beta rolling out in September

Posted in: Google, preview, Today's Chili

It’s hard to tell if Wave — Google’s new collaborative, universal messaging platform — is revolutionary or simply, well, neat. It’s like a telephone, great when everyone else has one but not so useful if you’re the only one. At least that’s how it seems after watching the near-universally acclaimed demo presented at Google I/O back in May. Starting September 30th, Google will open up the beta to 100,000 of its closest friends. Just hit the appropriate read link below to register for an invite or click through to watch the 1 hour and 20 minute demonstration. Go ahead, work can wait, innovation can’t.

[Via PC Mag]

Read — Sign up for Wave
Read — September 30 beta

Continue reading Video: Google Wave public beta rolling out in September

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Video: Google Wave public beta rolling out in September originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 22

Canon’s Hybrid Image Stabilizer tech takes the blur out of your twist and shake

Posted in: Today's Chili
Canon's Hybrid Image Stabilizer takes the blur out of your twist and shake

In the past few years image stabilization has gone from a big-money feature available only in the priciest of lenses to something of an afterthought in the most boring compacts. So, what’s a high-priced lens to do if it wants to maintain its exclusivity? Why, invent a new flavor of stabilization, of course. Canon is introducing its Hybrid Image Stabilizer technology, set for inclusion in some mystery lens before the end of the year. It compensates for camera shake on two axes: rotationally and linearly, meaning you should be able to get smooth shots whether you’re on the Tilt-a-Whirl or a wooden roller coaster. Canon isn’t indicating just yet how much this new Hybrid IS lens will cost, or when other bits of glass will follow in its pixel-perfect footsteps, but is indicating it’ll be included in “a wide range of products” — we’d guess none will be cheap.

[Via Photography BLOG]

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Canon’s Hybrid Image Stabilizer tech takes the blur out of your twist and shake originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 22

CyberSearch 1.0.1: Background Colors are Back

Posted in: Features, Firefox Extensions, Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 01, 2008 by CyberNet.

cybersearch101.pngOkay, so I wasn’t thinking that I’d have a new version of CyberSearch so soon, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will stop the flood of emails requesting that I revive the customizable background color feature. Yesterday we released CyberSearch 1.0, and with it came a bunch of new features. Along with that I also scrapped the option to customize the background color of the results.

Why would I get rid of this feature? For a few reasons actually:

  • The new version of the extension put the CyberSearch icon in the upper-right corner of the results making it easy to distinguish without needing a background color. Well, at least that’s I thought, as well as a few other people I asked before releasing the new version.
  • A few people emailed me saying that the default color doesn’t look great on some themes. One thing I’ve always tried to keep in mind while building this extension is what would be best for the users who will never bother to open up the settings.
  • When you upgraded to a new version of CyberSearch the background color you had previously customized would get wiped out.
  • In order to see the updated background color you had to restart the browser, which was a pain for anyone that wanted to try a bunch of colors to see which one they liked the best.

I assumed that people who wanted to customize the background color of the results wouldn’t mind using Stylish, and I provided instructions on how to change the background color using the Stylish extension. That was obviously not what people wanted… they wanted to see the feature back in all its glory.

This isn’t easy for me to say, but I was wrrrr…….ong. There, I said it. Happy?

cybersearch result appearance.png

I’m pleased to say that the customizable background color has returned in CyberSearch 1.0.1! Not only has it returned, but I’ve improved it. In fact I’ve corrected all of the problems I listed above. Your background color preferences is now remembered across all upgrades, and you can see the effects of changing the background color without restarting the browser. There is still no background color by default, but any user that wants to change it will now be able to do so in the CyberSearch settings.

Hopefully this will please everyone, and I apologize to anyone that was upset by me removing this feature. Just take a deep breath… everything will be okay now, I promise. *arms extended waiting for a great big hug*

Grab CyberSearch 1.0.1

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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Jul 22

OnStar debuts Remote Ignition Block to shut down stolen vehicles

Posted in: gps, Today's Chili

OnStar’s already rolled out a method for slowing down stolen vehicles once the cops have ’em in sight, and it looks like it’s now come up with a solution for the ones that get away as well. Dubbed Remote Ignition Block, the new sevice does just what it promises and uses GPS to prevent the vehicle from starting again once the ignition has been turned off. As with most of these systems, however, the police will first have to confirm that the vehicle is in fact stolen before OnStar flips the switch, so you’ll have to come up with something else for your next grand workplace prank. No word on specifics just, but OnStar says it’ll be making the service available on over two million GM 2009 and 2010 model year vehicles.

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OnStar debuts Remote Ignition Block to shut down stolen vehicles originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 06:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 22

Asus Already Shipping USB 3.0 Equipped Motherboards

Posted in: Miscellaneous, Today's Chili

p6x58-p-04

USB 3.0 is almost upon us. Asus has already built a USB 3.0-sporting motherboard and released it into the wild. The P6X58 is pictured above and you can see on the left side (the two blue rectangular holes) that it has a couple of the new speedy bus ports, along with slow old USB 2.0 on the other side.

As a Mac user, I’ll be happy when USB 3.0 finally comes to Apple machines. The on-again-off-again FireWire story is like the plot of a bad telenovela; I don’t much care what ports are on there as long as they actually stay there. Buying a FireWire device now seems dumb as the protocol will surely be dropped in favor of the new USB soon enough, and no wonder, with a theoretical maximum speed of 5 Gbit/s and a real-life expected rate of 400MBytes/s.

Asus motherboard may be the first, but it’s aimed at the higher end of gaming: There’s a slot for a Core i7 processor, six DDR3 memory slots and three PCI-X 2.0 PCIe 2.0 slots. (thanks for the correction, calidan!) We’ll wait until the new protocol starts making it into mainstream consumer machines before we start ditching our old FireWire gear.

Product page [XFastest via Engadget]


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Jul 22

Canon’s New Anti-Blur Lenses Will Be Available This Year

Posted in: lenses, Today's Chili

canonhybrid-001

Blur is a bane and a boon to the photographer, depending on just what type of blur it is, and where it is found. Canon’s newly announced Hybrid Image Stabilizer aims to do a better job of removing the bad kind from your photos.

There are two kinds of blur: A shot can be out of focus, or moving too fast for the shutter to freeze. These can both be good. An out-of-focus background makes the subject pop out, and motion-blur, say by panning with a moving car, gives the impression of speed by blurring the background.

But the bad kind is the kind that makes your friends look all fuzzy when you can’t hold the camera steady. IS, or image stabilization, has been around for a while, and it uses a computer to analyze the scene and compensate for your wobbly hands by shifting either lens or sensor (or both). Up until now, this has worked with linear blur, movements left-to-right or up-and-down. Canon’s new IS also works with rotational blur.

The new tech gets information from an angular velocity sensor, kind of similar to the iPhone’s accelerometer. The extra dimension of shake-correction means that the system can be optimized for both normal and macro (close-up) photography, as different types of shake become more apparent at different distances. Tilting the lens when very close to a flower, for example, can have a large relative effect.

The oddest part of the announcement, though, is that “The technology will be incorporated in an interchangeable single lens reflex (SLR) camera lens planned for commercial release before the end of 2009”. It’s unusual to pre-announce something like that. On the other hand, we’re half way through the year already. We’re looking forward to seeing what this will do for low-light shooting. Right now is an amazing time to be a photographer — camera tech has caught up to film already, and now the boffins are bent on inventing all sorts of fancy new toys.

Press release [DP Review]


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Jul 22

“Flying laptop” spacecraft could “transform” in space, sort of

Posted in: satellite, space, Today's Chili

Impressive as they are, satellites and space probes aren’t always the most versatile pieces of equipment once they’re up in orbit. A new satellite developed by researchers from the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Space Systems looks set to shake things up in a pretty big way when it launches in 2012, however, even if it’s not quite the “transforming” space probe that you might be imagining. Described as a “flying laptop,” the satellite promises to pack a vast array of instruments and sensors, including cameras, multispectral imagers, star trackers, and GPS receivers, to name a few, all of which can apparently be completely reconfigured on the fly in space. That, the researchers say, could let the satellite switch from, say, an atmospheric pollution sensor to a near-Earth asteroid detector, an even open up some new commercial possibilities, with different groups able to rent out the satellite to perform various tasks.

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“Flying laptop” spacecraft could “transform” in space, sort of originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 22

Augmented Reality Business Cards: WoW For Suits?

Posted in: Miscellaneous, Retro, Today's Chili

Jonas Jäger took the dying business card, rolled it onto its back and placed his palms on its chest. Taking his weight on his knees, he pushed down firmly with the heels of his hands an pumped three times. Leaning over, he put his mouth over the dying card’s face and blew. The card fluttered in the breeze, stiffened and then coughed. It was alive!

And so it was that Jonas extended the life of these ailing slices of dead tree. The Augmented Business Card uses tech similar to that already seen in baseball cards. On the front, it is a normal business card, but – like a mullet – once you get around back the fun begins. The rear is printed with a QR-code, one of those square, mosaic bar codes. Next to that is an AR (augmented reality) marker, a blocky black shape for tracking the card’s movement.

The card-owner uses software to make a presentation which is then uploaded to the web. When the lucky recipient puts the card in front of their computer (and fires up the Flash-based software), the card’s info is read by the webcam and they enjoy a 3D experience overlaid onto the card. They can then twist and turn it to control various parameters.

It’s a great idea, but users still need to navigate to a Web site before they can use it. Once this wrinkle is taken care of, though, the humble businessman’s comfort-blanket can live on for a few more years.

Product page [Toxin Labs. Thanks, Jonas!]


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Jul 22

Sonic Boom: Screeching Alarm Shakes Kids Awake

Posted in: household, Today's Chili

It’s a shame that Wired.com editor Dylan Tweney doesn’t write more posts here on the Lab, as he has completely nailed the Sonic Bomb alarm clock in one line: “113 decibels and a 12-volt mechanism for shaking the bed? Are they trying to kill kids, make them go deaf, or both?”

The Sonic Boom/Sonic Bomb is aimed at kids who sleep in (which is all kids). The 113dB screech issues from the machine like an air-raid siren and the groggy victim can halt the wailing with the traditional snooze button, letting them repeat the eardrum-assaults for up to an hour. The “Bomb” part is the additional bed shaker, a 12v disk which sits under the mattress and shakes the hell out of the lazy-bones on top.

There’s also a model for girls, which offers the same deafening, skeleton-rattling experience on in hot pink, and heart shaped. $43.

The irony is doubled when you realize that Dylan looks so much like Streetfighter 2’s Guile that he has been banned from wearing army fatigues and dog tags (and not just at comic conventions). And Guile’s special move? The Sonic Boom. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Product page [Sonic Alert]


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