$100 OLPC to Cost $176 and May Run WINDOWS!

If you weren’t sick of the OLPC, here is even more news. Nicholas Negroponte, the head of the One Laptop Per Child project, has almost confirmed that the cost of the laptop would be close to $176 but also make a reference to the machines may be adopted in US schools and it may run Windows.

XO’s developers have been working with Microsoft so a version of Windows can run on the machines […] It could be the $3 software package that Microsoft announced last week for governments that subsidize student computers. It includes Windows XP Starter Edition and some of Microsoft’s “productivity” software.

That would be a direct blow to Steve Jobs who offered MacOS X for Intel to run on the upcoming laptop - for free. However, Jobs’ offer was declined in 2005 as the organization is searching for a 100% open source solution.

Posted on Uneasy Silence by Dan

Fresh News Become Standard Search Results

As promised last week, Google's web search results integrate results from Google News. The standard news OneBox that was displayed at the top of the page for queries related to recent news was replaced with a list of links to news articles, displayed anywhere in the top results.

The important news will rank higher than less important ones and they become a standard search result. This is the first step in Google's big plan of integrating every type of content in one index: an universal search engine that mixes web pages, images, videos, books, scholar papers, news articles and more.

It will still take some time until the change propagates to all Google's data centers, so you may not see results from Google News displayed as standard results (try to search for news-related queries like Bush, Iraq).

Creative Commons-licensed by rustybrick. More screenshots.

found on googlesystem.blogspot.com

Homeless Internet Citizens

So you open the door, you step inside and you discover that your house is empty: no furniture, no books, no family, no pets. Your home became empty and nobody bothered to explain why.

That's what happened to Google Personalized Homepage for some users today. Says Michael M.:

Today, I logged on at college and all was fine on my homepage. When I got home, I turned on my laptop and my homepage had reverted to the default, with all of the default gadgets and the default theme. I tried to re-add my gadgets, but it keeps going back to the default style. I've tried clearing my cookies/history and signing in/out.

The personalized homepage is the page I visit most on the internet, it tracks all my news and weather and lets me keep track of my schedule and chat to my friends on Google Talk.


My homepage looks the same, but there's a big thread at Google Groups with people who lost their homepages. Google's answer is so endearing:

We're now in frantic-chase-down-this-bug mode here at the Googleplex, and I hope to have more info for you soon. For now, we're not entirely sure of this, but it's possible that changing your homepage theme might cause the problem. SO, if you still have your homepage intact, please avoid changing your theme until further notice. The big question I know you'll all want answered is whether you'll get your homepage back once we sort things out... and the really honest answer is that I hope so, but I just don't know yet.



{ Thank you, Thomas, Redmar, Yasar, Michael, Joe. }

- found on googlesystem.blogspot.com

The exact same thing happened to me btw and it REALLY SUCKS! My personalized page was down right perfect and now I have to start all over.

HP Shows Off Some Sexy Ideas for the Future

Hewlett Packard, more commonly known as HP, is going on tour. The HP Mobile Innovation Tour will show off HP's radical ideas for personal electronics in the future, the near future that is, because HP plans to make these awe-inspiring new toys available as of 2012. In the tour's latest stop in Mumbai, India, HP looks ahead to 2012, where all devices will be able to communicate with each other. Cool? Hell, I think so.

Some of the highlights of the broad range of upcoming products include a flexible display, a smart shelf, a media hub in the form of a watch, a digital wallet and an odd looking notebook. I'll provide the link at the bottom of the post, but first here are some eye catchers.

Steve's the man! Just Say NO to Rent-a-Song.

Apple chief executive, Steve Jobs, on Wednesday maintained his view that customers would rather own their music than rent it, suggesting he's unlikely to give in to calls from the music industry to add a subscription-based model to iTunes.

"Never say never, but customers don't seem to be interested in it," Jobs told Reuters in an interview after Apple reported blow-out quarterly results. "The subscription model has failed so far."

Jobs' comments come at a time when Apple is believed to be preparing for iTunes licensing renegotiating with several of the music industry's largest labels. As part of those talks, several of the labels are expected to badger the Apple chief to add a subscription model to its industry-leading iTunes Store.

The labels, which are battling an ongoing decline in sales of compact discs and the simultaneous proliferation of illegal music downloads through peer-to-peer file sharing networks, are touting the potential of subscription services to boost their revenues. They believe a subscription model would increase the consumption of music and allow them to reap monthly payments in addition to small licensing fees each time songs are played.

Thus far, however, Jobs appears poised to stick with Apple's current a-la-carte and album download model, which has catapulted his firm to the forefront of the digital download business. Since its inception back in 2003, the company's iTunes music store has sold more than 2.5 billion songs worldwide.

"People want to own their music," Jobs said.

For its part in the impending negotiations, Apple is expected to press the music labels for further concessions on selling music without copy-protection software known as digital rights management (DRM). In a landmark deal announced earlier this month, EMI Group -- the third largest music label -- announced that it would begin selling DRM-free tracks on iTunes in May.

"There are a lot of people in the other music companies who are very intrigued by it," Jobs said of the move. "They're thinking very hard about it right now."

The Apple chief executive is hoping pressure from the EMI move weighs on three of the other big labels -- Universal, Sony BMG, and Warner Music -- essentially forcing them to follow suit in order to remain competitive.

"We've said by the end of this year, over half of the songs we offer on iTunes we believe will be in DRM-free versions," Jobs told Reuters. "I think we're going to achieve that."

Found on Apple Insider ... where else?

The day before...

Copy: Monday 10 September 2001 - The world can change in a day. Don't miss your daily edition of in-depth news.

It's not often that a print ad literally jumps up and throttles our attention like this one - done for local newspaper brand Cape Times - did this morning.

There are four executions. This one in reference to 9/11, another (beautifully shot) for Hiroshima 1945, the JFK assassination and the '76 Soweto riots [all after the jump].

Using iconic events from history, the campaign highlights the fact that world-changing events often can¹t be predicted and that the course of history can, quite literally, change in a day.

Love the art direction and the hard-hitting message of these ads. Stunningly arresting.

Makes you think what the Virginia Tech campus looked like on Sunday morning.

found on Cherryflava.com

Earthlike Planet Found - Could Possibly Support Life and Already Contain Liquid Water

The most enticing property yet found outside our solar system is about 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra, a team of European astronomers said Tuesday.

The astronomers have discovered a planet five times as massive as the Earth orbiting a dim red star known as Gliese 581.

It is the smallest of the 200 or so planets that are known to exist outside of our solar system, the extrasolar or exo-planets. It orbits its home star within the so-called habitable zone where surface water, the staff of life, could exist if other conditions are right, said Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

“We are at the right place for that,” said Dr. Udry, the lead author of a paper describing the discovery that has been submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

He and other astronomers cautioned that it was far too soon to conclude that liquid water was there without more observations. Sara Seager, a planet expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, “For example, if the planet had an atmosphere more massive than Venus’, then the surface would likely be too hot for liquid water.”

Nevertheless, the discovery in the Gliese 581 system, where a Neptune-size planet was discovered two years ago and another planet of eight Earth masses is now suspected, catapults that system to the top of the list for future generations of space missions.

“On the treasure map of the universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X,” said Xavier Delfosse, a member of the team from Grenoble University in France, according to a news release from the European Southern Observatory, a multinational collaboration based in Garching, Germany.

Dimitar Sasselov of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who studies the structure and formation of planet s, said: “It’s 20 light-years. We can go there.”

The new planet was discovered by the wobble it causes in its home star’s motion as it orbits, using the method by which most of the known exo- planet s have been discovered. Dr. Udry’s team used an advanced spectrograph on a 141-inch-diameter telescope at the European observatory in La Silla, Chile.

The planet, Gliese 581c, circles the star every 13 days at a distance of about seven million miles. According to models of planet formation developed by Dr. Sasselov and his colleagues, such a planet should be about half again as large as the Earth and composed of rock and water, what the astronomers now call a “super Earth.”

The most exciting part of the find, said Dr. Sasselov, is that it “basically tells you these kinds of planets are very common.” Because they could stay geologically active for billions of years, he said he suspected that such planets could be even more congenial for life than Earth. Although the new planet is much closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun, the red dwarf Gliese 581 is only about a hundredth as luminous as the Sun. So seven million miles is a comfortable huddling distance.

How hot the planet gets, said Dr. Udry, depends on how much light the planet reflects, its albedo. Using the Earth and Venus as two extreme examples, he estimated that temperatures on the surface of the planet should be in the range of 0 degrees to 40 degrees centigrade.

“It’s just right in the good range,” said Dr. Udry . “Of course, we don’t know anything about its albedo.”

One problem is that the wobble technique only gives masses of planets. To measure their actual size and thus find their densities, astronomers have to catch the planets in the act of passing in front of or behind their stars. Such transits can also reveal if the planets have atmospheres and what they are made of.

Dr. Udry said he and Dr. Sasselov would be observing the Gliese system with a Canadian space telescope named MOST to see if there are any dips in starlight caused by the new planet. Failing that, they said, the best chance for more information about the system lies with the Terrestrial planet Finder, a NASA mission, and the Darwin missions of the European Space Agency, which are designed to study Earthlike planets, but have been delayed by political, technical and financial difficulties.

“We are starting to count the first targets,” said Dr. Udry.

You can read this article by New York Times writer Dennis Overbye, reporting from New York City, N.Y., in context here: www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/science/space/25planet.html

found on http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=11485

iTunes + Yahoo = Lyrics?

By Katie Marsal

A proposed deal between Apple and digital media company Gracenote could soon see the iPod maker serve up song lyrics through its ubiquitous iTunes Store.

The move would be part of a larger industry-backed push to stifle proliferation of unauthorized websites that currently dominate the market, often offering inaccurate lyrics and never compensating artists for their work.

Gracenote and Yahoo! kicked-off the effort earlier this week in announcing a licensing deal allowing Yahoo! Music to offer legal, licensed song lyrics from hundreds of thousands of songs to its customers. Some feature artists include U2, Elvis and The Beatles.

In a deal with music publishers last summer, Gracenote gain the rights to distribute lyrics from nearly 100 music publishers, including the top five: BMG Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, and dozens of prominent independent publishers.

“Song lyrics are continually among the top 10 searches performed on major search engines, though the results often provide consumers a frustrating experience filled with inconsistent and incomplete lyrics, and annoying pop-ups,” said Craig Palmer, president and chief executive officer of Gracenote.

In speaking to Reuters, Palmer revealed his firm is in discussions with various other music partners, such as Apple's iTunes. "We wouldn't be in the business to launch just one service, so stay tuned," he said.

The arrival of lyrics on iTunes could present exciting opportunities for Apple, which already offers high-quality album artwork downloads to its customers. A deal between Gracenote and Apple would almost certainly pave the way for lyric downloads to digital music players, allowing iPod users to sing along to their favorite tunes. Karaoke products and possibilities also exist.

In speaking to Reuters, Palmer said licensing lyrics should boost worldwide music publishing revenues, estimated at about $4 billion annually, by as much as $100 million annually within the next 10 years.

found on Apple Insider

Intel CPU Prices Drop, Drop, Drop!

According to Akihabaranews, Intel has been cutting the price of its CPU (whole range) up to 40% ! The following chart was found on Akihabara and as you can see it demonstrates the drop in price of each intel CPU. Anyone out there with plans to refurbish your old desktop or maybe wanting to make it able to run Vista .... or OS X, but have incompatible CPU's (shucks, my problem); your prayers have been answered. (Tip: Click the picture and it will get bigger!)

Try Google's Next Design Before It Goes Live

Google's latest design test for the search results pages and homepage is clever and has big chances of replacing the current one. The big change is that Google adds a navigation menu for its services placed at the top of the page. The list of services includes Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs (the last two are hidden under "more"). If you click on one of the navigation link, you'll go to the homepage of that service, strange as that may seem for search-related services. Under the search box, you'll see links to other specialized search engines that provide useful results for that search. For "Bush", there are many services listed, including news, news archives and blog search, but for most queries you'll see few services listed (for "Google", you'll see only news search; for "flowers", image search; for "c++", code search, blog search and groups).


Courtesy of Webbsnack, here's how you can test this new design.

Copy this code:

javascript:document.cookie= "PREF=ID=fddb01133a87d314:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1177334998:LM=1177334998:GM=1:S=OOg0FEVzpPplxe9J; path=/; domain=.google.com";void(0);

go to google.com/ncr, paste it in the address bar, press enter, then search for something clever. I absolutely love the new design, but if you don't like it, clear your Google cookie and it'll go away.


Small observation: the number of results should be at the top of the page. I sometimes search for things on Google just to see the number of results (this is my primitive grammar checker).

found on http://googlesystem.blogspot.com

Microsoft admits Vista failure

Actions speak louder than PR

By Charlie Demerjian in Beijing: found on the inquirer

WITH TWO OVERLAPPING events, Microsoft admitted what we have been saying all along, Vista, aka Windows Me Two (Me II), is a joke that no one wants.

Microsoft did two unprecedented things this week that frankly stunned us.

Dell announced that it would be offering XP again on home PCs. The second that Vista came out, Microsoft makes it very hard for you to sell anything other than Me II. It can't do this on the business side because it would be laughed out the door, but for the walking sheep class, well, you take what you are shovelled.

This is classic abusive monopoly behavior, Microsoft wrote the modern book on it. It pulled all the major OEMs in by twisting their arms with the usual methods, and they again all fell into line. Never before has anyone backpedalled on this, to do so would earn you the wrath of Microsoft.

But Dell just did. This means that Me II sales are at least as bad as we think, the software and driver situation is just as miserable, and Dell had no choice but to buck the trend. If anyone thinks this is an act of atonement for foisting such a steaming pile on us, think again, it doesn't care about the consumer.

What happened is the OEMs revolted in the background and forced Microsoft's hand. This is a big neon sign above Me II saying 'FAILURE'. Blink blink blink. OK, Me II won't fail, Microsoft has OEMs whipped and threatened into a corner, it will sell, but you can almost hear the defectors marching toward Linux. This is a watershed.

The other equally monumental Me II failure? Gates in China launching a $3 version of bundled Me II. Why is this not altruism? Well, it goes back to piracy and how it helped enforce the MS monopoly. If you can easily pirate Windows, Linux has no price advantage, they both cost zero.

With Me II, Microsoft made it very hard to pirate. It is do-able, you can use the BIOS hack and probably a host of others, but the point is, it raised the bar enough so lots of people have to buy it. Want to bet that in a country with $100 average monthly salary, people aren't going to shell out $299 for Me II Broken Edition?

What did MS do? It dropped the price about 100x or so. I can't say this is unprecedented, when it made Office 2003 hard to pirate it had to backpedal with the student edition for about $150. This time though, things are much more desperate.

If you fit Microsoft's somewhat convoluted definition of poor, it still wants to lock you in, you might get rich enough to afford the full-priced stuff someday. It is at a dangerous crossroads, if its software bumps up the price of a computer by 100 per cent, people might look to alternatives.

That means no Me II DRM infection lock in, no mass migration to the newer Office obfuscated and patented file formats, and worse yet, people might utter the W word. Yes, you guessed it, 'why'. People might ask why it is sticking with the MS lock in, and at that point, it is in deep trouble.

So, it did the unthinkable, and dropped the price. I won't bother to hunt down all the exec quotes saying how people can't afford clean water would be overjoyed to sell kidneys to upgrade to the new version of Office, but they are out there. This was a sacred cow, and it is now hamburger backed up against the wall.

These two actions by Microsoft are proof of what I suggested three years ago. Microsoft has lost its ability to twist arms, and now it is going to die. It can't compete on level ground, so is left with backpedalling and discounts of almost 100 times.

What we are seeing is an unprecedented shift of power. It is also an unprecedented admission of failure. And the funniest part about the moves made? They are the wrong things to do. Microsoft is in deep trouble.

iPhone's Technical Difficulties

Whispers on the street have it that Apple has run into some issues with the iPhone's OS, preventing a solid supply of the much-ballyhooed phone to hit stores in time for the launch. A source from the manufacturer has this to say on the situation: "It does not look feasible that Apple will be able to ship units out in May to make the shipping date in the US (June), so expect units to trickle by end of June or early July."

Apparently, Apple has sent 50 engineers to Taipei to work around the clock to get the bugs worked out so the iPhone can ship on time. That's a lot of engineers. The source claims that such a shift in manpower is part of the reason Leopard was delayed. We're not sure how likely it is that Apple would send that many people halfway around the world, but anything is possible. Take it with a grain of salt.

Is it just me, or is the iPhone sharing more traits with the much-maligned Playstation 3 than anyone cares to admit? Let's see: The pricing is exactly the same ($500 and $600 models), there are manufacturing delays that are going to make for a very unpleasant launch, and both products are banking on the popularity of their predecessors to become huge sellers. Add to that a touchscreen without tactile feedback that might not be what people are expecting and this might not be the home run that Apple (and everyone else) is anticipating.

These are, of course, just rumors, and it's entirely possible that the iPhone will roll out as smooth as honey in mid-June, with thousands upon thousands of people lining up to toss more money at Apple. In any case, it should be interesting. –Adam Frucci

The above article was found on Gizmodo.

Google Spreadsheets Adds Charts

Google Spreadsheets finally added charts. This feature has been developed for many months and was one of the biggest lacks from Google's spreadsheet application.

You can create more types of charts: columns, bars, lines, pie, scatter, add labels and a legend. Just select the columns you want to plot and click on the new chart icon. After inserting the chart in the spreadsheet, you can save it as a PNG image or edit it.

The charts are rendered as SVG in Firefox/Opera and VML in Internet Explorer, so they don't require plug-ins. As usually, Opera is not officially supported, so you'll find things that don't work as expected.



You can annotate cells and Google search the content of a cell.


The above was all found on googlesystem.blogspot.com

Hotdoll: The Sex Doll for Dogs

Is your dog in heat and humping anything it can wrap its horny little legs around? Are you constantly having to pry your promiscuous pooch off the legs of guests, parents and members of your church? Protect your leg from a hump attack by getting Scruffy a Hotdoll. Yes, it's a sex doll for dogs. It's shaped like a dog and it'll allow your tension-filled pet to go to town as much as his little heart desires, humping away until he passes out in exhaustion, leaving a wispy coil of friction-singed dog-fur smoke wafting into the air.

The above was all found on Gizmodo, check out the original article on Giz by clicking here.

More Girls Than Guys Online

Women outnumber men online, and it's likely to stay that way. *Pause for applause and cheering* WHOOOOOOOOOO!

Yes folks, it's true! Girls now outnumber guys on the internet by about 6 MILLION users! The table's are turning and I like it! Anyone who knows me knows I'm so not a feminist and I get really annoyed at the hairy, masculine girls who get all hard up about this kind of stuff, but this is the one time I'll be stepping out of character to scream WHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GO GIRLS!

According to eMarketer, female usage of the internet in the U.S. has risen 12.4 per cent since 2000, compared with 3.2 per cent for males.eMarketer estimates that there will be an estimated 97.2 million female Internet users ages 3 and older in 2007, or 51.7% of the total online population. In 2011, 109.7 million US females will go online, amounting to 51.9% of the total online population.

Schools need to do everything in their power to push this further. THE INTERNET IS NOT JUST FOR GEEKY GUYS, THERE ARE GEEKY GIRLS TOO AND IT'S TIME TO LEARN! Schools need to teach girls about code, designing websites, graphic design, blogging, rss feeds, torrents, and all major sites like youtube, wikipedia, filehippo, and all those damn social network sites. Only 66 per cent of the estimated 97.2 million females online watch videos, compared with 78 per cent of the 90.9 million men.

The author of the eMarketer report said the change in demographics could affect trends in content and usage of the web.

"For girls who have grown up with technology, there is no significant gender gap in internet usage," said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson. "The rise of activities that are particularly appealing to young females, such as social networking, will result in even greater usage."

More Women Online [eMarketer via Slashdot] - [Gizmodo]

New Mac v.s PC Ad

This one actually RIGHT ON THE MONEY! I hate stupid trial programs, they suck and I don't ever want to buy them. I don't want to have Norton or Mcafee virus protection for a year and then be forced to pay for it afterwards. If you try to delete the damn you get ALL SORTS of problems, especially with Mcafee. And for god's sake, I don't want real player or quicktime to be bundled with anything. I know where to get it, and I'll get it if I want it. I hate realplayer! Say NO to bundled trial versions and other bundled software!

Leopard Screenshot?

It isn't much really, but I found the above screenshot (no confirmation on it's legitimacy) on Gizmodo with the following article...

"The fanboys are sad that OS X Leopard is going to be late, so in the meantime, here are some fresh screenshots to keep em held over. There, there, it'll be ok.

These are shots from the latest build seeded to developers, 9A410. Charming name aside, this evolution of the beta unifies the UI elements, ditching the now aging brushed aluminum window borders, along with the interesting Finder sidebar icons. Check em out.

BTW, these won't be around very long, so look at em, love em, and kiss em goodbye.

UPDATE: I also like Leander's take on the low probability of these being real, and the logic behind that reasoning.–Brian Lam"

More Shots: (hint - click on the pics and they'll get bigger!)

Apple's iPod may gain Wi-Fi by holidays

Apple plans to launch new iPods featuring Wi-Fi during the second half of 2007, according to a report at DigiTimes, the same publication which first reported that Apple would be forced to push out Leopard's release until October.

In a brief posting, the Taiwanese rumor publicized cited "portable music player component makers" who say that Universal Scientific Industrial (USI) has been contracted by the Cupertino-based iPod maker to produce the Wi-Fi modules and that Foxconn will act as the OEM system assembler.

USI will reportedly begin the first shipments of its Wi-Fi modules to Apple later this month, while Foxconn isn't expected to deliver the completed players until the third quarter, which runs July - September.

DigiTimes's report is somewhat in line with expectations published by AppleInsider over the course of the past few months. Sources initially reported that three distinct iPod models lie on Apple's roadmap for 2007, later adding that one of those players --- a next-gen video iPod -- was tracking for a third quarter release.

Thus far, Microsoft's Zune has led the way to increasing development of Wi-Fi portable music players, with Creative and SanDisk most recently showcasing such players at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show. According to DigiTimes, Samsung and Sony are also planning to offer similar products in the near future.

found on AppleInsider

If It’s XP You Want, It’s Vista You’ll Get

Microsoft is adamant that they will no longer allow Windows XP to be installed on new PC’s after January 2008, DESPITE only 10% of Windows users actually wanting Vista.

Also, hardware will be manufactured to ONLY support Vista, so you would not be able to install XP on your new hardware. Do you think anyone should care about XP anymore? Are people really overreacting to Vista? Is Vista the next Windows ME?

found on Uneasysilence

Apple delays Leopard until October because of iPhone

By Peter Cohen on Macworld

Apple on Thursday released a statement noting that Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard” won’t be released until October. The cause of the delay? The iPhone.

“iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is,” reads a statement published by the company.

Getting the iPhone ready for its June launch has had an unintended consequence, however: QA and “some key software engineering” resources allocated to Mac OS X needed to be diverted from their work to finish the iPhone. As a result, Apple won’t release Leopard at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, as it had first planned.

“While Leopard’s features will be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing, and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure we’ve made the right ones,” reads the statement.

Make Your iPod Kid-Safe

Cutest iPod accessory yet! This adorable rubber case for the iPod video is possible the cutest thing I've seen this week and I saw baby hedgehogs on Monday. By your little ones iPods, strap pop em' in these colorful cases, and plop them down in the backseat. Finally, there's a way to entertain kids on long road trips without having to listen to Barney and Friends through the car radio. Just load all of Jill and Johnny's favorite Disney and Pixar movies onto their iPods and you can again enjoy the privilege of operating your own car's radio. Of course you would have to either be really rich or REALLY LOVE your kids to get them these "toys". But hey, just think about it, pretty soon you'll have to by them anyway as schools in England and Michigan, USA are starting to use iPods and PSP's in the classroom. - More about that when the story grows. - Adam Frucci, my favorite Gizmodo blogger, had this to say about the product and I found it quite amusing....

It's never too early to start indoctrinating your children into the Church of Apple, and this iFrogz Tadpole iPod Case can do just that. Featuring big ol' handles to let the young ones grab it and kid-sized headphones, it's the perfect way to let your kid appreciate the clean design and intuitive functionality of the iPod before they can walk. Before you know it, they'll be drooling over 8-core Mac Pros, just like Dad. –Adam Frucci

New Mac v.s PC Ads

There are two new Mac v.s PC ads to be seen on the Apple website. The first is very cute because it shows a flashback to when Mac and PC were kids and the second pokes fun at PC's and their error messages......oh the many error messages. Kind of freaks me out because I'm gonna be installing Vista Home Premium here on my laptop in a few days and I'm wondering whether or not I'll regret or whether or not I'll be able to reinstall XP if Vista sucks. If there's anyone out there who has Vista already and think I'm making a massive mistake, please tell me now.

3D Buildings in Google's Street Maps

Google Maps adds a new dimension to buildings in the street maps of more than 30 important cities from the US (like New York or Boston). Frank Taylor from the unofficial Google Earth Blog argues that they're not yet 3D. "You can't rotate or tilt your view, so it's 2D. But, the buildings have shaded 3D-like projections from an angle so you get an idea of height and shape of the buildings."


This is, in fact, Google Earth's building layer. To see it, go to the layers sidebar and enable "3D buildings".


Google Earth's layers contain a lot of useful information that enhance the satellite imagery: road names, airports, parks, populated places, pictures and more. The cool thing is that they reside on Google's servers, so you don't need to update Google Earth to see new information. Google Maps could become much more useful if it included these overlays.

googlesystem.blogspot.com

New Digital Audio Players by SONY, with Direct USB

E Series that's the name of the latest version of SONY DAP, as you can see you could easily mistake them for USB keys even though those feature an OLED color screen and sexy colors. 1, 2 or 4 GB is the amount of space you'll be able to choose from and thanks to the Direct USB thing you can plug it in just about any device and use it as a regular USB tool. Of course as a DAP it's more than that and the CLEAR AUDIO technology (Clear Audio, Clear Bass) should take care of your ears. Another thing is the good autonomy (30 hours of play) and a 1 minute = 1 hour of play system, pretty good ! Dimensions : 22.4x82.9x13.6mm and only 29g ! found on akihabaranews.com - Click HERE to see more pictures.

VAIO's Now in More Great Colors!

The Sony Vaio notebooks have been upgraded and now come in several adorable new colors including "espresso black, shell white, coral pink, summer sky blue, urban grey and fresh green."

The upgrade includes refreshed processors, starting with the Celeron M 430 at 1.73 GHz and reaching up to the 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo T7400. Sadly, the new versions have the same 1.280 x 800 pixels 13.3-inch display, although this time the top of the line is powered by the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7400 card instead of the previous Intel GMA 950 chipset. And of course, they all come with yet another license of Windows Vista Home Premium.

A Batch of Gmail Accounts, Accidentally Disabled

Next time when you can't access Gmail, be happy that Gmail is down only for a few minutes. Other people have to live days without their Gmail accounts (and you know it's hard to do that).

Last week, the Gmail team realized that a bunch of spammers found a temporary home at gmail.com. Says the Gmail team: "We have been actively investigating a batch of accounts that were accidentally disabled and are currently in the process of re-enabling these accounts. This error occurred in an effort to target a large network of spammers to keep them out of the Gmail system and keep your inbox free from spam. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we re-enable these accounts as quickly as possible."

Collateral damages, you'll say. But not if you're one of the poor souls who had the misfortune to be the target of Gmail's team raid. While some of the accounts were disabled, others didn't have links to email attachments.

My account is readable.. like i can logon. but i can't download any of the attachments. i have two huge presentations coming up and all the files are on my account. i trust google more than a usbkey soo i always have my files on my account. now i can't even get them.. and i can't get any one to send them to me. so please please fix it soon. "lockdown on sector 6" is what i get and i abide by google's terms of use.

Benedikt ("benedictus" means "blessed" in Latin), the wise soul from Gmail's Google Group, saves the day:

I think this extremely unfortunate event shows us the danger of having all the important information in one place, a place that depends on the functionality of one large software package, such as GoogleMail. (...)

What we experience right now is such a failure and most of the posts in this topic that have been posted before this one show us the consequences that can have. So let us hope that the capable engineers of Google will succeed in restoring GoogleMail's full functionatlity as they have succeded in building up the virtual world of collaboration, information and communication that has made Google what it is today.

While Gmail is a useful web application, you shouldn't use it to store mission-critical files or information. And if you do, make sure you have backups: store your files on different storage mediums, forward your Gmail messages to other accounts or pray that Gmail team doesn't have a bad day and disables your account. If you see an error message like "Lockdown in sector 4 (or 6)", complain to Google.

Google says they promptly re-enabled the affected accounts, but there are still people who can't access Gmail. And might "move their operations" to other sites, if the Gmail team continues to treat them like that.

I've been locked out of my original email for a full 7 days come midnight. I'm also locked out of anything google associated, so I can't post new content to my blog, nor check AdSense income. I thought I would have to wait the standard 5 days and now I realize my account wasn't having password issues, this was a long standing issue that it seems they knew about.

Which makes me upset enough to move my operations from google; I hope everyone else does the same...this is the only free email service I have known with regular outages, shutdowns and no customer support. The last time I lost access to my email was 3/14/06, my birthday no less...luckily, I got it back in 24 hours. Now, it's been 7 days.

found on googlesystem.blogspot.com

Batch Upload Files to Google Docs

You'd think that Google considered Docs & Spreadsheets important enough to make it easy to import files. Or to export files. You can do that one file at a time, but it becomes tiresome if you have a lot of files.

Fortunately, the latest version of Google Toolbar for Firefox has a feature that lets you drag and drop files to your browser and they are automatically uploaded to Google Docs. To upload more files at a time, go to Windows Explorer or other file manager, select your files and drag them in Firefox.

To activate the feature, to go to Google Docs & Spreadsheets after installing the toolbar. You'll get a prompt that asks you if you want to enable the feature. Alternatively, click on Settings / Options and enable "Docs & Spreadsheets".

Found on googlesystem.blogspot.com

Coolest Birthday Cake Ever

Some 15 year old kid got this cake on his birthday along with the real thing. I found this at this site if you wanna know more.

Sony VAIO Graphic Splash Edition Laptops, All Gussied Up In Easter Outfits

Somebody pinch me. Sony's dressed up some VAIO laptops for the Easter parade. Too bad they're limited to just 1350 units. Never mind all the goofy names for the colors Sony has festooned to the shells of these VAIOs, just join us in gawking at the photos of these purdy 13.3-inch VAIO C series and 15.4-inch VAIO F series notebooks. Plus, somebody told us they're not wearing any panties. These Graphic Splash Edition models will be available April 17, with the C Series starting at $1250 and the F series at around $1000. Or if you're not one of the lucky 1350 to snap up one of these babes, you could just get some cheap contact paper and stick it onto your notebook that you have right there in front of you, available now at the dime store for about $.79. – Charlie White on Gizmodo

iPod Slows Enemy Bullet, Saves Life

Kevin Garrad of the 3rd Infantry Division is an iPod user for life—which incidentally got extended thanks to Apple's little music player. He was on patrol in Iraq when he met an armed insurgent carrying an AK-47. Both opened fire, and the bullet heading toward Kevin hit his chest right where his iPod was, which was enough to slow down the bullet to not pierce entirely through the body armor.

The fact that he had a 20GB (older and thicker) iPod probably helped slow down the bullet more than if he had one of the newer (and thinner) 30GB ones. In that sense, an Archos would probably be enough to stop a tank shell. – Jason Chen

Ipod saves Soldier's Life [Flickr via Neatorama]

found on Gizmodo

Apple finally rolls out 8-core Mac Pro

Apple Inc. on Wednesday quietly introduced a version of its Mac Pro professional workstation that sports 8 processor cores via two Intel Xeon quad-core microprocessors.

When purchasing a Mac Pro through the company's online store, customers can now choose to build their machines with a pair 3GHz quad-core "Clovertown" Xeons.

The 8-core Clovertown option adds $1,498 to the Mac Pro's base price of $2,499. The base system continues to offer quad-core computing via two 2.66GHz dual-core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors. Woodcrest Mac Pro systems are also available for configuration with 2GHz and 3GHz chips.

Customers can configure the Mac Pro with over 4.9 million build-to-order options including: up to 16GB of 667 MHz DDR2 fully-buffered ECC memory; up to four 750GB Serial ATA hard drives running at 7200 rpm; up to two 16x SuperDrives with double-layer support; ATI Radeon X1900 XT and NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 graphics cards, both with 512MB of GDDR3 SDRAM; AirPort Extreme module, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR module; Apple USB Modem; Apple Wireless Keyboard and Apple wireless Mighty Mouse; Mac OS X Server Tiger; Apple Xsan; and Apple Fibre Channel PCI Express Card.

Professional velocity.

8-core or quad-core Mac Pro workstation

Meet the latest addition to the Mac Pro family: The world’s first 3.0GHz, 8-core Intel Xeon-based Mac Pro. Consider the bar officially raised.

Performance standard

No matter which Mac Pro model you choose — 8-core or quad-core Intel Xeon — each delivers advanced performance, workstation graphics, and unparalleled expansion in so many possible configurations, your imagination has finally met its match.

Eight cores or four

Opt for the 8-core Mac Pro and you get the power of two Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Clovertown” processors running at 3.0GHz. Or choose a quad-core Mac Pro featuring two Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors and decide how fast they fly: 2.0GHz, 2.66GHz, or 3.0GHz. At 3.0GHz, the quad-core Mac Pro runs up to 2x faster than the Power Mac G5 Quad.

Sources
AppleInsider
Apple.com

Filehippo's Software Update Checker

I was complaining in a post from January that Google Pack could be a very cool package if it had an API that allows it to check a wide variety of software for updates. Google Pack only includes Google's software and a small list of other free applications like Firefox, Adobe Reader, RealPlayer.

Filehippo, one of the best sites where you can download high-quality software, launched Update Checker, a small utility that scans your computer for installed software and displays a list of updates. While the software doesn't require installation, it doesn't check for updates periodically and must be manually launched. Another inconvenient is that you have to manually download and install the updates.

The software is in beta, so it wouldn't surprise if it adds these features in the next versions.

- googlesystem.blogspot.com

Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Improve your Productivity

Firefox is the browser of dreams for many people (myself included). One of the great perks of Firefox is that there are tons of extensions that enhance the functionality of the browser. With over 1500 extensions in existence, there are many that can be used to improve your productivity. The following is my take on the top 10 extensions that will keep you focused, reduce distractions, streamline your daily work flow, and improve your productivity.

1. Customize Google

Customize Google is a very robust extension that lets you customize many features of the services provided by Google. Customize Google lets you block advertisements on pretty much any Google page (including Gmail). It remaps Google Images search results to point directly at the images (no longer will you need to click through the originating site). Customize Google lets you add links from other search engines directly into your search results. It can also block Google click tracking and allows you to connect to Google Calendar and Gmail securely (https). Give it a try, you won’t be sorry.

2. Gspace

Gspace is a content management extension that lets you turn your Gmail account into an online mass storage device. Gspace integrates nicely into your browser and lets you drag and drop files into Gmail for backup or storage purposes without interrupting your work flow. If you use Gspace, I recommend adding a tag in Gmail to your files so they can be filtered and accessed quickly. The following is the description of Gspace from its homepage: “Gspace turns the 2GB of your Gmail account into free online storage. With Gspace you can manage unlimited Gmail accounts to store all type of files within its simple, user friendly interface. Listen to your favorite stored music directly from your Gspace, view your collections of pictures and manage your Gdrive files as well. Download Gspace now and transfer files between your computer and Gspace at anytime, from everywhere!”

3. Flashgot/DownThemAll
The default download manager built into Firefox is very handy; however, there are many occasions that you’ll find that you need more flexibility with your downloads. This is where Flashgot or DownThemAll comes in handy. The features of Flashgot and DownThemAll have their differences; however, they generally provide finer-grained control of your downloads. My personal preference is Flashgot. I recommend trying at least one of them.

4. Greasemonkey + Stylish + Ad blocking per Gozer
Greasemonkey is an extension that lets you add scripts that alter the web pages you visit. Using Greasemonkey and Stylish and Ad blocking per Gozer together will block pretty much every advertisement from any Web site you visit.

5. Flashblock

The Flashblock extension by default blocks flash from playing when a Web page is first opened. Most (distracting) advertisements are written using flash. Flashblock is particularly useful because it replaces the flash from a Web site with a “play” button so you can watch the flash if it something useful (like a video at Youtube) and leave it blocked if it is an advertisement.

6. Download Statusbar

Download Statusbar manages your downloads in the status bar instead of the Firefox Download Manager. I find that the download manager that comes with Firefox to be very intrusive. Download manager tucks your download progress bars into the generally unused status bar of Firefox. This lets you download care-free without the Firefox Download Manager popping up and interrupting you.

7. URL Fixer
URL fixer will replace the common typos you enter when typing a Web site into the URL bar (i.e., http://www.lifehack.rog, htp://lifehack.org). The auto correct feature of URL fixer is very helpful. “[URL Fixer] will correct common misspellings of .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, and .mil, as well as the protocol (http:, https:). It will also correct errors in country code TLDS such as .com.XX, .net.XX, and .org.XX.”

8. Tab Mix Plus
Many of the features of Tab Mix Plus were incorporated into the release of Firefox 2. However, Tab Mix Plus allows you to add finer-grained control of your tabs. The following is a description of Tab Mix Plus: “Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager with crash recovery that can save and restore combinations of opened tabs and windows.”

9. Scrapbook
Scrapbook is extremely useful for researchers and students. Scrapbook saves blurbs from Web pages to your hard drive along with the URL of the originating Web site. It allows you to organize and categorize your blurbs in a format similar to your bookmarks so that when it comes to creating a bibliography or works cited, you won’t waste any time.

10. IE Tab

I find myself using this extension less and less as more Web developers code their Web sites following standards. However, occasionally you will find it necessary to open a Web site using Internet Explorer in order for it to render correctly. Rather than taking the time to launch a separate browser, just choose “View Page in IE tab” and an Internet Explorer tab opens in Firefox. This is very useful if you like to have multiple Gmail accounts open and active on one computer.

That’s my take on the extensions that will improve your productivity. Like I previously mentioned, there are tons of Firefox extensions. What extension didn’t I mention that you can’t live without? Please tell us about your favorite productivity-enhancing Firefox extension in the comments.

- found on www.lifehack.org