Girls Love Gadgets

coondoggie writes with a link to a NetworkWorld article about the dangers of IT department snoops. A study released today is likely to exacerbate the trend of failing trust in employees; it shows that one in three IT employees poke through systems and prod at confidential information while on the job. The survey was done by a firm specializing in password security, so some salt might be required for this particular article. “The survey found that more than one-third of IT professionals admit they could still access their company’s network once they’d left their current job, with no one to stop them. More than 200 IT professionals participated in the survey with many revealing that although it wasn’t corporate policy to allow IT workers to access systems after termination, still almost 25% of respondents knew of another IT staff member who still had access to sensitive networks even though they’d left the company long ago.”

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The Tie Guy writes “Sling Media’s Slingbox allows consumers to watch and control their home television programs from a remote PC or smartphone — a process called ‘placeshifting’. Content owners are typically edgy when it comes to the placeshifting topic. However, most don’t view Slingbox as an imminent threat that will destroy the commercial broadcast model. Major League Baseball is going against the grain by saying that Slingbox owners who stream home games while traveling are breaking the law because it allows consumers to circumvent geographical boundaries written in to broadcast deals. This has sparked a huge debate that has the MLB, baseball fans, and the CEA up in arms. CEA President Gary Shapiro doesn’t agree, and is coming to the defense of Sling Media and place-shifting in general.”

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Hajsky writes “Ars Technica takes a closer look at Microsoft’s new “Surface” tabletop device. Turns out that Surface isn’t actually a touchscreen at all, but uses five cameras located in the table’s base to record movement and touch. ‘The five cameras are near-infrared devices, but that’s not because they are trying to read heat signatures from fingertips (or other body parts) on the table. Instead, it’s because the entire surface of Surface is bathed in light; by illuminating the top of the table, the cameras can easily see when things are placed on it. Shining colored light across the surface of the table would spoil the effect that Microsoft wants, so near-infrared light is used for invisible illumination.’ The whole setup runs on a Core 2 Duo and off-the-shelf hardware, and can handle 52 simultaneous touches.” jfanning wrote with a link to an overview of similar technology used in the Helsinki ‘CityWall’. The article she provides discusses the unique public display, and has an in-depth video on the way these kinds of setups work.

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Filed under: Cellphones

For a company that tends to concentrate on candybars and the occasional slider for its smartphone stable, a double shot of S60 flips in the American market is pretty much a bumper crop — and that’s exactly what Nokia’s delivering, officially announcing its own availability of the N75 and the N76 today. Notice we say “its own” availability; the N75 has been livin’ it up in AT&T’s lineup for a few weeks now but it’s been nigh impossible to get one contract-free from the carrier, so Nokia’s direct sale is a welcome one for folks that just want to buy one outright. Side by side, the N76 solidly whips its stablemate in the looks department, but bear in mind one critical fact: 3G data lurks underneath the N75’s hood. Pick up the N75 for $429.99 and the N76 for $499.99 starting today from Nokia (including the flagship stores in New York and Chicago) and its distributors.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

AlexGr writes “According to Eweek’s Peter Galli, Microsoft sees no contradiction between its open-source community building efforts and the more-than-thinly-veiled legal threats at Linux and other projects. Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s vice president of intellectual property and licensing, actually states: ‘One makes the other possible, especially at a time like this, when interoperability is so important. Microsoft recognizes the importance of interoperability, which is why we are doing the things we are in our products, why we created the Interoperability Executive Customer Council, and why we are listening to customers.’”

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Yeah, you may be proud if something you conjured up sold one million pieces, but we’re talking Microsoft here. The boys and girls at Redmond (thankfully) aren’t satisfied with leaving things as they are, and just over two months after loosing v1.3 on the world, the Zune is officially getting another firmware update bringing it to v1.4. Notably, the actual software is still sitting at v1.3, and for the majority of you who voted this here device as the worst of the year, there ain’t much here to change your attitude. According to ZuneInsider, the curiously minor update simply provides “an improved shuffle experience,” and in particular, “makes successive shuffle actions produce more random lists.” We know, you’re patiently waiting for us to finish detailing what else v1.4 brings, but unfortunately that looks like the end of it. Feel free to get your download on if this somehow gets you jazzed up.

[Thanks, Segadc]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Laptops

Look out, laptop users — your machines are out to kill you in more ways than one. Not only do you need to worry about exploding batteries, a new article in London’s Daily Mail claims that “girls as young as 12 are being diagnosed with nerve damage” from slouching over laptop screens. The main problem appears to be bad posture when using the laptop on your, uh, lap — hunching over in this way apparently causes chronic back problems in all sorts of people. While we’ve certainly put a crick or two in our necks after a long work session on an plane, the story strikes us as being classic scare-journalism: although a lot of frightening statistics are trotted out, no published research is cited and the two main sources quoted are chiropractors. On top of that, the article gets one very important aspect of laptop use incredibly wrong — the reason integrated wireless has made laptops so popular is that you can stretch out on the couch and browse the web instead of slumping over a desk. Funny thing none of those chiropractors mentioned that, eh?

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

puntloos writes “The Open Source Internet TV Platform ‘Democracy’ has just received a $100,000 Grant from the Mozilla Foundation. Democracy is a combination of ways to view and download media to your desktop in an intuitive way, built on top of the ever-popular VLC video player. Seth’s blog has details: ‘The Mozilla Board agreed to support them for the following reasons: 1. Their mission to ensure the continued rise of open source & open standards aligns with the Mozilla mission to encourage choice & innovation on the web. 2. They’re building something that can have influence on the way users browse web content, rich media, and desktop UI — and it’s based on Mozilla technology. 3. PCF is another example of that leverage we are looking for…they don’t have any venture backing, they’re running on a very lean budget, and they continue to seek creative resources to make a big difference in the way their users access content on the Web.’”

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Filed under: Cellphones

Ok, imagine this for a second. You’re Eric Schmidt — head of the most powerful internet company in the world, worth $4.8 billion dollars, member of Apple’s board of directors… and you don’t carry Apple’s new cellphone. So what’s a brother got to do to get a friggin iPhone? Check this:

Walt: “… Steve was flashing his iPhone around. I held it for 20 minutes.”
Eric mentions he hasn’t held it, and doesn’t have one.
Walt: “Your a member of Apple’s board!
Eric: “No…I’m still waiting for mine.”

So either Eric still has his iPhone in pocket-stealth mode, or Steve’s totally stiffing his bud down in Mountain View — we’re bummed either way.

P.S. -Walt asked about the Googlephone, which Eric non-denial denied exists. Instead Eric just talked about phones, platforms, application layers, partnerships with KDDI, LG, Samsung, etc.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: GPS

TomTom has already tussled with Garmin over alleged patent infringement, but it looks like the company has now drawn some ire from a slightly more unexpected source, with Encyclopaedia Britannica now suing it, along with Magellan and, somewhat curiously, American TV & Appliance (a retailer based in Wisconsin). So far, about the only thing that’s known about the lawsuit — which was filed May 21 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin — is that Encyclopaedia Britannica is claiming that the companies infringed on some of its patents for a “computerized map system.” Exactly how that applies to these three particular companies and not everyone else, we’re not sure, though we’re sure we’ll be hearing more about it soon enough.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!