Friday, November 30, 2007

Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii destroying PS3?

Microsoft claims enormous lead in PS3 sales, Sony disagrees

read more | digg story

Getting MySQL Status Values With mysqlreport

mysqlreport is a Perl script that displays a well-formatted report of important MySQL status variables (taken from MySQL's SHOW STATUS; output) that can help you gain an understanding of what is happening under MySQL's hood. It can help diagnose problems.

read more | digg story

Evel Knievel makes the ultimate jump

Evel Knievel, the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over crazy obstacles including Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

read more | digg story

Six CHM viewers for Linux

Even though CHM is a Microsoft format, several projects have written CHM file viewers for Linux.

read more | digg story

DIY Video Circuit Bending

I love the retro aesthetic of the enclosure, it also has something to do with the medium video and the submedium video glitch. I found 8 of the same, new enclosure for very little money! Its hard to find your material nowadays. Especially potentiometers, orignal switches, or any moving somponents. Circuit bending is becoming a expensive practice.

read more | digg story

Flickr: 10 things we love and hate

I've put together of five things I love about the service, and five I loathe.

read more | digg story

Going Places with Flickr Places

A Vagabondish post tipped us off on the latest happenings at Flickr: the introduction of the Flickr Places feature. Since the photo-sharing site put up a particularly neat map of the world, the Flickr gang is quite excited about letting us travel the world through photographs submitted by people everywhere.

read more | digg story

Virtualbox Host Interface Networking - HowTo

So I needed a way of running a couple test servers. Each needed to accept connections from the network including the host operating system. The connections needed to also be static for server testing. As a reminder to myself, here is a brief rundown on how to do it.

read more | digg story

Facebook announces modifications to Beacon advertising program

Facebook has altered its controversial "Beacon" advertising program, following complaints by users and protests from activist groups like MoveOn.org.

read more | digg story

Baking soda could help save planet

n recent months, PopSci has covered various scientists' plans to curb global warming through carbon sequestration, mainly by feeding it to algae to make biofuel, or burying it underground.

read more | digg story

Dell Takes Cybersquatters to Court

Personal computer giant Dell Inc. is pursuing a major "cybersquatting" lawsuit against several companies that buy and sell Web site addresses, alleging that the entities earned millions of dollars from Internet traffic intended for Dell and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies.

read more | digg story

NES mini (entire NES system in controller)

I took a famiclone (Super Joy III) and put it in a controller, with a bit of style and quality added. It was made for my girlfriend who's a big NES nut like me. That made it easy to guess a gift for her birthday. Just thought, "what would I want?" Razz I got it made a little late, but it was worth it to make right.

read more | digg story

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Tuning Apache and PHP for Speed on Unix

Here is my compilation of tips on how to optimise Apache on Linux for PHP and CGI programs. These tips can also apply to Perl and Python. Links will open in a new window.

read more | digg story

Speed PHP application development by using PEAR

Reduce the amount of PHP you have to write from scratch by taking advantage of the PEAR code library. PEAR functionality is easy to deploy and can help you shorten your development cycle without compromising quality. See how you can put PEAR to work.

read more | digg story

THX Debuts New Animation in Theaters | Animation Magazine

Acting more or less as trailers for audio portion of the feature presentation, the animations feature that unmistakable, trademarked electronic crescendo known as THX Deep Note. The latest in the series is titled “Amazing Life,” and it is set to debut this holiday season.

read more | digg story

This thing is huge, The biggest helicopter in the world

The Mil Mi-12, known as V-12 in the Soviet Union, and by the NATO reporting name Homer, is so far the only helicopter produced by the Mil bureau to depart from the single main rotor plus tail rotor formula. It is to date the world's largest helicopter and flew for the first time in 1968, but did not enter production.

read more | digg story

And the Best Community Linux Is...

The three biggest community Linuxes are Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu. They're all popular. They're all good. But which is the best?

read more | digg story

Novell ships first real-time SUSE Linux

Novell is shipping the first real-time SUSE Linux enterprise data center operating system, SUSE Linux Enterprise Real Time 10.

read more | digg story

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Don't drive over a pile of leaves...

you could kill a kid.

read more | digg story

Blame it on the economy

Econ prof admits to bludgeoning wife, Ellen, to death; reaches deal on manslaughter charge.

read more | digg story

Hack Attack: How to set up a personal home Subversion server

Think of Subversion as a wiki-like repository for your files. Each time you make a change to a file or group of files that you're happy with, you can commit those changes to your Subversion repository. If you don't like where the changes got you, Subversion can compare your current version with any previously-committed version and pick out the be

read more | digg story

Combining Rotation and Translation in Java 3d

Understanding rotation in Java 3D is not too difficult. Similarly, it is not too difficult to understand translation in Java 3D. However, when you combine rotation with translation, things become very complicated very quickly. If you don't really understand what you are doing when you combine the two, the chance that you will get it right the first

read more | digg story

Kino Tips: Installing from Scratch and Exporting MPEG Videos

If you're ready to give video editing and movie making a try now that you know about Kino, here are some tips to get you up and running.

read more | digg story

Is Greenpeace biased towards Sony?

Greenpeace Ranks Microsoft, Nintendo Poorly in Phasing Out Toxic Chemicals

read more | digg story

You've Made Digg - Now What?

When you work with Digg, reddit, and the like, you want to get the POP: getting your content to a coveted spot on the homepage. Getting the pop can be difficult— social news users are wary of ulterior motives and will sometimes bury your wonderful content before it can see the light of day. So, we do lots of things to make our sites look less

read more | digg story

You've Made Digg - Now What?

When you work with Digg, reddit, and the like, you want to get the POP: getting your content to a coveted spot on the homepage. Getting the pop can be difficult— social news users are wary of ulterior motives and will sometimes bury your wonderful content before it can see the light of day. So, we do lots of things to make our sites look less comme

read more | digg story

Monday, November 26, 2007

Control Arduino remotely with HTML forms

I devised a simple way to get HTML form data, or URL encoded CGI data, to the Arduino using a remote server. Here is the package to download. Here is a flow chart of how the system works.

read more | digg story

14 Creative Ways to ReUse Your Garbage

Look into your garbage can: see anything that might still have some life left to it? Here's fourteen suggestions from the Simple Dollar to use your refuse in new and creative ways.

read more | digg story

Web 2.0 threat looms

The web is already the main target for security attacks. Now the functionality of dynamic web 2.0 applications is providing new ways to compromise machines. Anthony Plewes looks at the vulnerabilities and the possible fixes.

read more | digg story

Japan stands by its renewed 'scientific' whale slaughter

"I'm getting so tired of the biased articles I read in Western newspapers each year at this time," says Dr Pastene, who supervises nine scientists studying whale samples at Tokyo's Institute of Cetacean Research.

read more | digg story

Will Kindle Be the Next iPod?

A Digital Book Reader From Amazon.com Has the Potential to Create a New Market

read more | digg story

GeoNames founder opens up the GIS world

Marc Wick discusses the GeoNames project: how it started, what it uses to keep running, where it is being used and where the project is heading. He also discusses free and open software, how an increasingly GPS-enabled world is driving the need for free data, the politics in data access and more.

read more | digg story

The Linux Alternative Project

A database with Windows software and the Linux equivalents and alternatives.

read more | digg story

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Dell Buys Everdream

Is this a dream or a nightmare for the channel? The VAR Guy is thrilled to hear Dell has acquired Everdream, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) specialist. But the folks over at those old channel publications will likely ask more questions about Dell’s intentions in the managed services market.

read more | digg story

Howto Tweak Ubuntu

This tool is for ubuntu which makes it easy to change hidden system and desktop settings.Ubuntu Tweak is only for GNOME desktop environment.This is still under heavy development and very good utility for ubuntu users.

read more | digg story

Thoughts in Air: Emacs + Firefox as Blog Development Environment

a development environment is more productive if it can reduce the time for context switching, i.e. keep edit, building and running in the same environment. With Emacs + nXhtml + w3m, we can achieve this goal. The only but critical problem is that the functionalities of w3m is quite limited compared with popular browsers like Firefox: e.g. it does n

read more | digg story

Canonical launches Ubuntu Linux developers service

A new software development collaborative service for Ubuntu Linux is being launched today to give developers a consolidated arena to build code for Ubuntu on the desktop, server and for mobile applications.

read more | digg story

M/S Explorer 'failing' in key areas

It had several deficiencies when last inspected, a report claims.

read more | digg story

Mathematics in Nature

Nice spiral contained in a plant.

read more | digg story

Awesome FREE Software Oscilloscope for Linux

No need to spend thousands of dollars on a oscilloscope (unless you are a pro)

read more | digg story

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Latest Cut in DVD-Player Duel

Until a few weeks ago, Bill Zimmerman had no interest in buying a next-generation DVD player, at least until a winner was declared in the battle between the two dueling formats, Blu-ray and HD DVD.

read more | digg story

Discover Python, Python's built-in numerical types

Getting started with Python, a powerful object-oriented scripting language

read more | digg story

The immune-to-shoe 10 inches spider

10 inches of spider you want to keep your distance from.

read more | digg story

Top Digg Contributor's are Frustrated: Is Mixx the Answer?

It has recently been reported by TechCrunch that many of the top contributors to Digg are leaving the online community for what they say are better alternatives. Many of these contributors are switching to Reddit, Propeller, or Mixx.

read more | digg story

IBM Files Patent for DVD Commercials, NOOOOO!!!!!!!

Filing way back in February of 2006, IBM patented a model for a dynamically updated, commercial-laden DVD. Essentially, the DVD would be coded to stick commercials in at certain points on the disc, which, depending upon one's reading of the documents, would probably not be skippable.

read more | digg story

Monkey brains use web link to control robot legs

WOULD you believe that brain signals from monkeys in North Carolina can control a pair of robot legs in Japan?

read more | digg story

Friday, November 23, 2007

Monkey brains use web link to control robot legs

WOULD you believe that brain signals from monkeys in North Carolina can control a pair of robot legs in Japan?

read more | digg story

Here's a fun game: Try to buy a Nintendo Wii

Savvy shoppers are resorting to special tactics to track down the hard-to-find Wiis, which have benefited from a year's worth of word-of-mouth marketing to remain at the top of wish lists as the holiday shopping season formally kicks off today.

read more | digg story

Thursday, November 22, 2007

101 thoughts on losing 100 pounds

The following list is in no particular order. It’s simply 101 observations I had from losing 100 pounds. I am not a doctor or a nutrionist so take all of this with a grain of salt and discuss any weight loss plans with a professional.

read more | digg story

Getting Started With Ruby on Rails - Week 1

I’ve fallen for the hype and started using Ruby on Rails for building a database driven web application. If you’ve never heard of Rails it is a web framework using the Ruby programming language. Ruby is an object-oriented interpreted language, that’s often compared favourably with Smalltalk.

read more | digg story

Ecuador wants cell phones for the poor

Ecuador has contacted foreign mobile firms to negotiate new contracts that would impose higher penalties over operational errors and push companies to create a fund that would provide cell phone service to the poor, a government official said on Thursday.

read more | digg story

80s Band Sues 'Guitar Hero' Maker

Rock Band the Romantics Sues 'Guitar Hero' Maker Activision, Claiming Infringement

read more | digg story

Unreal Engine 3 comes to Wii

Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 is being employed in an upcoming Wii game, only the porting process is another company's doing.

read more | digg story

How to dual boot Windows XP and Linux (XP installed first)

You want to install Linux on your system which is already running Windows XP.

read more | digg story

Linux needs to try harder if it wants to catch Vista

There has been a meme going around in the Linux world that Vista is really a dog and that Microsoft is only managing to make its numbers by jamming the new OS down the throats of unwilling customers. Now I admit I don't use Vista and haven't spent a lot of time benchmarking it against Ubuntu or Mac OS X or any of the other non-Microsoft alternative

read more | digg story

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

William Shatner and Mr. T Team Up for World of Warcraft

Blizzard has wrangled some celebrities to help hock its 'wares on the TV. Namely, William Shatner and Mr. T. The commercials have the painfully self-aware and ironic celebs talking about their WoW characters -- Shatner as a Shaman, and Mr. T as a night elf "mohawk," or, more accurately, warrior.

read more | digg story

The Consumer-Electronics Gift Guide

Forget that sweater with those loopy, over-served snowmen on it, and don't even think about wrapping up that garden gnome you purchased online at 3 a.m. and giving it to that special someone.

read more | digg story

Highly superior gifts for the Linux geek

Ah, the crassness of the commercialized holiday season is upon us, and I could curl my lip and refuse to participate, but no! Instead, I have scoured the Internet for holiday gifts that are geeky with an open source, stick-it-to-the-man slant.

read more | digg story

4 iPhone Twitter Clients Battle it Out

I put 4 mobile Twitter clients (Twitter Mobile, PocketTweets, iTweet and Hahlo) through their paces. And here’s how they stack up…

read more | digg story

Free Software Group Files Copyright Lawsuits

The Software Freedom Law Center, an organization focused on protecting open-source and free software, has filed copyright lawsuits against two U.S. companies, alleging that they are redistributing software in violation of the GNU GPL (General Public License).

read more | digg story

Canon updates EOS 40D firmware

Canon has released an update to the firmware for its new EOS 40D SLRs designed to fix file format compatibility problems with some Adobe software.

read more | digg story

The Walkman Rides Again

Sony Once Owned the Portable Music Player Business, as they owned the video gaming market. They are giving the walkman a revamp

read more | digg story

Game Hacking 101

Gary McGraw and Greg Hoglund describe discuss techniques to prevent piracy and cheating in online games.

read more | digg story

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Open source hardware... A VGA Card

Home of the Low Budget, Open Source, VGA Compatible video card

read more | digg story

Black Friday Camcorder Deals

CamcorderInfo.com has scoured the ads and tracked down some of the best camcorder deals for you this holiday weekend. If you’re in the market for a new camcorder, be sure to act fast. Several of these deals are only good for Black Friday weekend.

read more | digg story

Adding Polylines in World Wind Java SDK

In this article we will look at how polylines can be added to World Wind Java SDK. Polylines are used to represent routes or tracks on your map.

read more | digg story

Mexicans Jittery About Raids, Deportations

Panic has taken hold of the six million Mexicans who live in the United States without residence permits, because of the ongoing crackdown on "illegal aliens", which has involved an increasing number of raids and deportations.

read more | digg story

Create Debian/Ubuntu Linux packages

Learn how to build easy-to-distribute packages for Debian users

read more | digg story

Gas prices war ends up in murder, 3 cents is worth a life

Masbouth, 51, of Warren is accused of fatally shooting his longtime rival, Jawad Bazzi, 45, of Dearborn Heights, who owned a BP station across the street. The two stations had engaged in a longtime price war for customers in a city where gasoline prices are consistently among the nation's highest.

read more | digg story

Monday, November 19, 2007

Hamster-Powered Night Light

Though Skippy the Hamster powers this night light by running on his excercise wheel, the same concepts and low-rpm alternator design could be applied to a school science project using different energy sources!

read more | digg story

Edit Avi Video Files Using Gimp

A very good plugin for editting video AVI files, where each frame of the video file is opened as a separate layer in gimp.

read more | digg story

Can ye hear me now? Outrageous mp3/megaphone contraption

Here I show how you can very simply modify a megaphone to accept 1/8" line input from an iPod, and mount the megaphone on top of a motorcycle helmet. The resulting "Mega Helmet" delivers the maximal aural stupidity allowed by law.

read more | digg story

$100 laptops? Not really, but $200 isn't bad

Forget about $100 laptops. It's a price point nobody's going to hit anytime soon - not even the One Laptop Per Child Foundation in Cambridge, the nonprofit organization that two years ago unveiled its plan to give ultra-cheap computers to poor kids.

read more | digg story

Intrusion Detection: Snort, Base, MySQL, And Apache2 On Ubuntu 7.10

In this tutorial I will describe how to install and configure Snort (an intrusion detection system (IDS)) from source, BASE (Basic Analysis and Security Engine), MySQL, and Apache2 on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). Snort will assist you in monitoring your network and alert you about possible threats. Snort will output its log files to a MySQL database

read more | digg story

DIY Polygraph

This machine, in conjunction with a certified examiner, is then used to analyze a subject's stress during interrogation with the intent of distinguishing truth from lying. These machines can cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars. We attempted to build one for $50.

read more | digg story

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Speeding Porsche driver apprehended despite gizmo

This was the first time the Ekurhuleni metro police had stopped a car using a laser jammer and impounded it.

read more | digg story

USB Hard Drive Mod for Xbox 360 Storage Enahancment

Using large portable/USB storage devices with your Xbox 360.

read more | digg story

A WiLD Idea: Wireless Long-Distance Internet for Rural Poor

Researchers in California have developed a way to extend the reach of Wi-Fi technology. WiLDNets have been set up in several countries.

read more | digg story

Wanted: Employees who play well with others

"If you're early, you may have to sit on a swing or the bottom of a slide," Mr. Hammond said. People who stand with a tight grip on their briefcases instead of sitting on the playground equipment aren't asked back.

read more | digg story

FREE Python Cheat Sheet

When learning about a new technical area there's often a bewildering amount of detail to keep track of. Generations of techies have made use of cheat sheets to have an easy reference to these details.

read more | digg story

Firefox Exploit can Hack Gmail

Vulnerability allows malicious code into browsers, revealing users' Google accounts.

read more | digg story

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Inside the Everex gPC:A Look at How Far $200 and a Trip to Wal-Mart Can Get

Seth Fogie examines and reports on the gPC, the latest sub-$200 computer to hit the market.

read more | digg story

MySpace Web hoax led girl to kill herself

Megan Meier thought she had made a new friend in cyberspace when a cute teenage boy named Josh contacted her on MySpace and began exchanging messages with her. The next day Megan committed suicide. Her family learned later that Josh never actually existed; he was created by members of a neighborhood family that included a former friend of Megan's.

read more | digg story

Start looking for that rich uncle of yours: Oil @ $200 !!!

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez opened an OPEC summit on Saturday with a chilling warning about 200-dollar oil if the United States attacks Iran in a speech that also urged the cartel to be more political.

read more | digg story

For this X-Mas have a Charlie Brown X-mas Tree //PICS

Have a humble X-Mas and remember what it is all about.

read more | digg story

Facebook bonanza for ID thieves

Banks are threatening to crack down on customers who become victims of fraudsters after revealing too many of their personal details on social networking sites, writes Ali Hussain

read more | digg story

Amazon to unveil e-book reader on Monday

Online retailer Amazon.com Inc plans to unveil its closely-guarded electronic book reader in New York on Monday, a source told Reuters.

read more | digg story

40mm thermobaric XM1060 grenade: the cave buster

This is a special cartridge developed for Afghanistan which generates a much more destructive blast than normal explosives. It was fielded in 2002 'in record time' and was very popular for use against targets in enclosed spaces such as caves.

read more | digg story

My cellphone has feelings

The Nokia 5500 has an accelerometer and pretty soon it will be standard on all mobile devices. While the applications created using this technology are useless now and mere tech demos, they do demonstrate that controlling a mobile with these gestures is coming sooner rather than later.

read more | digg story

AK47 Krinkov Paintball Gun. Beware, looks like the real thing

T68 AK47 Krinkov Paintball Gun shoots . 68 caliber paintball, made completely out of metal, it is powerful and the best bad guy weapon for paintball ever made.

read more | digg story

Free lessons on how tor draw manga

The tutorials begin with the basics of drawing hair, faces, bodies and clothing. Once you've mastered those, you may want to try your hand at the tutorials focused on illustrating specific anime characters, including those from the celebrated Dragonball Z series.

read more | digg story

Thursday, November 15, 2007

A Beginner's Guide to Wedding Photography

Have you ever been asked to take photos for a wedding? For some, wedding photography is a casual affair. Take a point-and-shoot camera, then snap away when the opportunity arises. For others, it’s a serious, full-fledged business.

read more | digg story

How to Take Better Night Photos

Do you like to take photos at night? I know I do. There's something magical about them - pictures of the moonlight sky and dazzling neon lights convey a special something that daytime photos can't.

read more | digg story

Front-line helicopter gunships evolve for the modern battlefield

The delivery of the US Army's first Boeing AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter on 3 October 2007 (built under the extended Block II contract) illustrates the continued importance of this particular genre of battlefield helicopter.

read more | digg story

What is the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers?

White House hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) confronted his experience gap while meeting Wednesday with employees at Google headquarters.

read more | digg story

Tim Burton sells out

Tim Burton is pairing up with Disney to direct two 3-D pics, "Alice in Wonderland" and "Frankenweenie."

read more | digg story

Darwin Awards: Man Held in Kids' Rape, Dog-Collar Shock

Man Allegedly Used Electric Dog Collar on Children as Stepmother Watched

read more | digg story

Hot deal: Amazing floating house for $4 mil to $5 mil

With housing prices what they are in the San Francisco Bay Area, many of our readers may be looking for other options. Don't move out of town--stay in the bay...literally...in this awesome floating house.

read more | digg story

Mozilla Won't Fix 80% of Firefox 3.0's Bugs

Mozilla Corp. will fix just 20% of the bugs now in Firefox 3.0 before the final version is released next year, the open-source developer's Web site revealed yesterday.

read more | digg story

Howto: Arduino Sound

In this article we take a small step; “Hello World” for Arduino sound. We prepare for our future experiments by hooking up a PC or powered speaker so we can hear the Arduino sing.

read more | digg story

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Create automated verbal conversation annotations for phone numbers

Use the open source Sphinx-4 speech-recognition package to capture letters and numbers from spoken conversations in near real time to create notes. Employ a custom Sphinx-4 dictionary file to extract likely matches to spoken letters and numbers. Process the text for higher order values, such as phone numbers and acronyms, and create a meeting annot

read more | digg story

PowerPoint Makeover 7: No Bullets Presentation

Create a presentation without bullets? Can it be done? This chapter proves it.

read more | digg story

Are Your Passwords Strong Enough? Advice from a Software Tester

Here's a look at passwords from the perspectives of a software tester, a business analyst, and a user.

read more | digg story

Configuring iPhone's Settings

Brad Miser explores the settings not related to specific iPhone functionality.

read more | digg story

Java theory and practice: Stick a fork in it

Learn how to exploit fine-grained parallelism using the fork-join framework coming in Java 7

read more | digg story

Building Modal Dialogs into Your Web Application

Ivan Pepelnjak describes how you can use JavaScript to implement a truly modal dialog box.

read more | digg story

Price Cut Boosts PlayStation 3 Sales

U.S. sales of the PlayStation 3 more than doubled in the weeks after the company slashed the video game console's price $100 and launched a low-end model, Sony Corp. CEO Howard Stringer told The Associated Press Wednesday.

read more | digg story

Data binding with Castor

v 2007 The Castor project provides data binding capabilities to the open source realm. It works much like Sun's JAXB, and adds enhanced mapping and binding to relational database tables. In this article, you'll take the first steps to get Castor to run on your own machine with downloading, installation, setup, configuration, class path issues, and

read more | digg story

Tip: Avoid unnecessary Ajax traffic with session state

Where possible, creating Web applications — including Ajax-based applications — in a RESTful way avoids a large class of bugs. However, a pitfall of REST (REpresentational State Transfer) is sending duplicate data across similar XMLHttpRequests. This tip shows how the moderate use of session cookies can maintain just enough server-side state to sig

read more | digg story

Ajax-based persistent object mapping

Map JavaScript objects to server data using Ajax with Persevere

read more | digg story

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

JSci - A science API for Java

This is a free set of JavaTM packages. The aim is to encapsulate scientific methods/principles in the most natural way possible. As such they should greatly aid the development of scientific based software.

read more | digg story

PHP: The need for speed

In this article I'll explain what you can do to further improve php performance, and how to make your users' browsing experience even more pleasant.

read more | digg story

Data Sources as Web Services

This article introduces WSO2 Data Services, a new feature available in WSO2's WSAS 2.0 platform (the latest release is version 2.1). I will begin by introducing Data Services, examining their architecture and utilization, and then exploring pros and cons of this convenient feature.

read more | digg story

I Found Jesus in My Wii

On Sunday, Wii owners got the new Check Mii Out channel download. The long rumored free channel lets players select their favorite Mii and upload it as a Mii Artisan along with a two initial name and a skill that includes cooking, exploring, supervising, writing or comedy. Once on the channel, Mii owners can choose to show off their creation in a r

read more | digg story

How To: Unlock The Power Of Gnome's Text Editor

One of the first questions from those who switch operating systems is usually — how can I make it more familiar? Typically this boils down to how can I make program X on my new system behave more like Program Y on the old system that I was used too?

read more | digg story

My Own Linux Distro: The Beginning

Here's a project I've been thinking about for a good long time, and which I've finally decided to get under way in public: I'd like to try and build my own custom Linux distribution.

read more | digg story

Mario: 1, Canadian Prime Minister: 0

According to a Harris/Decima survey commissioned by Nintendo of Canada, more people in Calgary, Toronto and Halifax can identify a photo of Nintendo's iconic video game character, Mario, than can identify a photo of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

read more | digg story

Say Goodbye to Car Chases

A Beam of Microwave Energy Could Stop Vehicles in Their Tracks

read more | digg story

Monday, November 12, 2007

Create an OpenOffice.org extension the easy way with BasicAddon

So you've written a nifty OpenOffice.org macro and want to share it with the world. You can, of course, publish the code on your Web site, but a better way to go is to pack it as an easy-to-install OpenOffice.org extension.

read more | digg story

Inside Intel's Penryn

Like all new processors, Intel's Penryn is a mixture of novel ideas and older, established designs. In Penryn's case, the mix leans heavily towards the latter; the processor is, at heart, the same as the previous Core 2 chip — just shrunk to fit 45nm instead of 65nm design rules.

read more | digg story

Web 2.0 T-Shirt Tells Us All Whether You Facebook Your Life Away

The latest addition to the chic geek's wardrobe has got to be this web 2.0 T-shirt. The classy bit of kit contains a list of 79 social networking sites, all followed by tick boxes.

read more | digg story

Adobe Chief To Step Down

Folk wisdom says to quit when you're ahead. Bruce Chizen seems to be listening.

read more | digg story

Wasteful Facebook addicts face the sack

Hundreds of employees have been sacked or disciplined for spending too much time on Facebook and other social networking sites at work, according to research.

read more | digg story

Google Offers $10M in Software Prizes

Google Inc. is offering $10 million in prizes for people who build the best software to enhance the company's upcoming cell phone operating system.

read more | digg story

University, Startup Sue Google Over Database Technology

A patent-infringement suit filed in a federal court in Texas last week claims the core technology behind Google's search engine misappropriates the intellectual property of a Northeastern University professor and the startup he co-founded. Will google pull an apple?

read more | digg story

Google's Android parts ways with Java industry group

Google's Android software gives Sun Microsystems' Java technology a starring role--but not the version of Java the rest of the mobile phone industry has been developing since the 1990s.

read more | digg story

Gimp tricks for b&w photographers

Just a few tricks I've learnt, discovered or regularly use on my own shots.

read more | digg story

Sunday, November 11, 2007

'Last Supper' May Have Hidden Last Song

A laptop screen shows musical notes encoded in Leonardo Da Vinci's "Last Supper," during an interview with Italian musician and computer technician Giovanni Maria Pala, in Rome, Monday, Oct. 22, 2007.

read more | digg story

Disabling Deprecated HTML Using CSS

When handing over a project to the client, you sometimes loose control over the content HTML source. Sometimes the client uses a CMS that allows them to have full control over certain parts of the HTML, and sometimes the client simply uses your templates to insert their own HTML content in the document.

read more | digg story

Social networking advertising skips assumptions, gives buyer action

Ten years ago, launching a Web site meant pouring money into banner ads, print campaigns and broadcast spots. These days those tactics have been relegated to footnotes in a Web site launch campaign.

read more | digg story

Galaxy Restores My Faith In Mario

Nintendo once again proves that realistic graphics and hi-tech consoles aren't what makes a fun video game experience. Super Mario Galaxy is a masterpiece that will be popping up on top games of all times lists for years to come.

read more | digg story

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Top Ten 1980's Robot Toys

Since I am neither creative nor original, I have decided to do a top ten list. Please, please, hold the applause. So, never mind the bullocks, here’s THE TOP TEN 1980'S TOY ROBOTS!

read more | digg story

Wii sales soar on Mario demand in Japan

Sales for Nintendo Co.’s Wii soared in Japan on the release of the new title Super Mario Galaxy.

read more | digg story

'Super Mario Galaxy' (Wii) Prepares for Midnight Launch

Kicking off the holiday shopping season on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 11, a multitude of Nintendo fans will line up at New York's Nintendo World store to be the first in the country to buy Super Mario Galaxy, the highly anticipated new game for Nintendo's Wii system.

read more | digg story

Severe XSS in Google and Others due to the JAR protocol issues

I had a few ideas in my mind about how the problem can be exploited in terms of Google. The first one was related to uploading a JAR archive on a public Google URL (docs, groups, etc). The second idea that I had was related to tricking the browser into believing that an external archive is located on the Google domain, possibly related to some kind

read more | digg story

Java JAR Attacks and Features

This is my last post for this week, so I will try to keep it short and sweet. While playing with the JAR protocol for Firefox (here and here), I also did some investigation on the way Java handles jars, as well. To my surprise, the Java runtime seems to posses some very interesting features which may easily be implemented into an attack scenario.

read more | digg story

WiiEarth -- Wiimote Interface for Virtual Earth

In this article, Brian Peek will demonstrate how to use a Nintendo Wii Remote (Wiimote) as a controller for Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D.

read more | digg story

How To: Computer Controlled Stepper Motor

In this article, we will connect a stepper motor to our computer's parallel port, and then we will write some code to control it with the scroll wheel on a mouse (video). If you have never worked with stepper motors, you will surely have a lot of fun with this project. With stepper motors, you can build things such as robots, automatic fish feeder,

read more | digg story

Star Wars: The empire invades known church in Spain //PICS

Way to celebrate the 30th anniversary,

read more | digg story

This is crazy: 3D Pool Table

Back in the last 60s, Star Trek introduced America to the concept of 3D chess. Although it was merely a prop that Mr. Spock used to punk every member of the Enterprise crew but Captain Kirk, eventually rules were created and now 3D chess is a reality. So, what’s the next natural step for a manly game? 3D pool of course.

read more | digg story

Friday, November 09, 2007

How much further can the Wii go?

Since its launch almost one year ago, the Nintendo Wii has certainly been the big surprise among the three major game console contenders. As we approach the one-year anniversary, TG Daily game expert Mark Raby reviews what has made the Wii the success it is today and how much room there is for more in the future.

read more | digg story

Using Supercomputers To Make Safer Nuclear Reactors

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is leading a $3 million research project that will pair two of the world’s most powerful supercomputers to boost the safety and reliability of next-generation nuclear power reactors.

read more | digg story

Why Email Still Fails: A Look at the Top 5 Culprits that Bring Email Down,

Despite large enterprise investments in replication, mirroring, and tape back-ups, e-mail systems continue to fail: painful outages that last for hours or days still occur, messages get lost, and business can almost grind to a halt.

read more | digg story

How to customise Firefox's appearance News

Make Firefox work for you

read more | digg story

Netscape co-founder and wife donate 27.5 millions

A Palo Alto couple with deep Silicon Valley roots announced today they will donate $27.5 million to build a new state-of-the-art emergency room at Stanford Hospital. Not every Silicon Valley entrepreneur is a SOB.

read more | digg story

PS3 And Xbox 360 Getting DivX Soon

After the latest PlayStation 3 2.0 firmware update, users are reporting the ability to see DivX files that were previously unrecognized by the PS3. Unfortunately, the files are not yet playable, but common sense says that the console can now recognize them for a reason.

read more | digg story

World’s Largest Arcade Console

We decided to build the world’s largest arcade console and so we did, making history yet again.

read more | digg story

Thursday, November 08, 2007

An 8-Bit Musical Wonderland

Over 40 musicians in NY for world's largest celebration of lo-fi culture.

read more | digg story

Getting to know GNOME

Linux has come a long way from the early, oft-crashing days. GNOME is now one of the primary desktops for the Linux operating system; not only is it highly customisable, but it is amazingly stable. We examine why Linux -- running GNOME -- is a viable desktop alternative.

read more | digg story

FOSS for cartoonists and illustrators

As more and more traditional publishers accept digital images, artists are turning to free and open source software (FOSS) tools to create cartoons and illustrations.

read more | digg story

Ten TVs for people who aren't TV people

Everybody's got a friend who doesn't own a TV. Maybe YOU are that person out of your friends who doesn't own a TV. Despite the reasons for not owning a TV (I can't think of any!), one thing in particular might turn some people off -- no pun intended -- about owning a television; TVs are ugly

read more | digg story

RFID racket reader

Build a RFID reader with cheap materials.

read more | digg story

Most New Yorkers oppose granting driver licenses to illegal immigrants

Most people in New York state are against Governor Eliot Spitzer's plan to grant driver licenses to illegal immigrants, said a poll by cable news channel NY1 that was released on Wednesday

read more | digg story

Process XML configuration files with PHP

Easily configure PHP applications and objects using XML configuration files

read more | digg story

SETI: Is It Worth It?

It's a risky long shot that burns up money and might never, ever pay off. So is searching for intelligent creatures on unseen worlds worth the candle?

read more | digg story

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Guitar Hero Makers Bring Game to iPod

The Phase interactive music game is playable on iPod nanos, iPod classics, and iPods.

read more | digg story

WiiPC, take the Wii interface to your PC

WiiPC is a Nintendo Wii menu simulator which allows you to make shortcuts to programs or even use as frontend on your Windows Media Center PC.

read more | digg story

Did Egyptian king unleash a curse on treasure seekers?

But while visitors will marvel at the delights in store, the team which helped bring the treasures before the public may have been victim of an ancient curse.

read more | digg story

Hack Your Doorbell

Just like your cell phone’s ringtone, you can change your dingtone to match the season or your mood. Our seasonal dingtone selection? Bing Crosby’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas;” natch.

read more | digg story

The Aquatic Pod-Racer

An eco-friendly homemade watercraft goes where other boaters only wish they could

read more | digg story

As Google pushes phones, Yahoo zeros in on ad deals

Yahoo mobile chief Marco Boerries is racing to lock down phone distribution deals that could deliver hundreds of millions of advertising customers before Google's own mobile strategy ever takes wing.

read more | digg story

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 beta coming soon

The first beta of Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0 browser was originally supposed to debut at the end of July, with the second beta arriving in September and the final version before the end of the year. While Firefox 3.0 is several months behind schedule, users of the popular open source browser will be glad to know that the launch of Beta 1 is just around

read more | digg story

Photobucket advances tagging concept

The media-sharing site Photobucket is introducing a search mechanism that lets users append labels to specific faces and objects in photos.

read more | digg story

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

The Forgotten Ruby Web Frameworks

With the success of Ruby on Rails, is there a place left for other Web frameworks written in Ruby? Everyone knows Rails, some might even have heard of Merb and Camping, but has anyone heard of Nitro, Ramaze, Sinatra, IOWA or Cerise? InfoQ quickly tours these frameworks and how they are appreciated (or ignored) by the blogosphere.

read more | digg story

XAMPP: an easy to install Apache daemon containing MySQL, PHP and Perl

Useful way to get your development environment started in minutes.

read more | digg story

Awesome walk-in panoramic display

Once I saw a tv

read more | digg story

Kick Off Your Daily Firefox Browsing with Morning Coffee

Morning Coffee Firefox add-on. It allows you to open a bunch of sites at once with the click of a button. That way, even if you haven’t yet had your strong cup of java, you won’t forget to check the sites you need to.

read more | digg story

Lego loses exclusive naming right

LEGO, the iconic Danish maker of plastic toy bricks, lost a brand infringement case today when Denmark's Supreme Court ruled an art gallery owner could use the Lego name since it was her surname.

read more | digg story

Microsoft rolls out Web services to link to Windows

Microsoft Corp. released on Tuesday a suite of free Web services that connect to its Windows operating system, delivering a major element of its strategy to maintain the dominance of its software while extending its reach on the Internet.

read more | digg story

Fate of Linux Guru's Life and Work Hang in Balance

The fate of a Linux visionary who is charged with murder will be decided in a trial starting Tuesday in Oakland, California, while the fate of the file system he created remains left in the hands of an open-source community rapidly losing interest in the technology.

read more | digg story

Java EE meets Web 2.0

This article explains the disparity between the Java EE and Web 2.0 approaches, explores the benefits of asynchronous designs, and evaluates some solutions for developing asynchronous Web applications with the Java platform.

read more | digg story

Monday, November 05, 2007

Top 10 'Seinfeld' characters

When you peel the cellophane off that hulking box set, look for the episodes that feature the following characters for a special treat.

read more | digg story

I Wanna Be Porn-Stealing, Privacy-Violating Geek When I Grow Up!

Citing the popularity of media phenomena such as NBC's new series "Chuck" and the trend-setting "The 40-Year Old Virgin," Robert Stephens says the geek archetype he created and later sold to Best Buy has become a type of contemprary hero.

read more | digg story

MIT Develops 'Tractor Beam'

Tool could manipulate tiny objects on a chip

read more | digg story

Great Wheel of China to take on London Eye

Work has begun in Beijing to build the world's biggest Ferris wheel, in another sign of China's ambitions before the 2008 Olympics.

read more | digg story

No, you can't have private attributes in Python

Is the lack of privacy a real shortcoming of the language, or is our judgment clouded by old the conventions of C++ and Java? Why do we need private variables anyway -- at what point does defensive programming become paranoia?

read more | digg story

Red Hat, Sun sign deals for Java Development Kit for Enterprise Linux

Target date not set; JDK will be developed in Fedora Linux community

read more | digg story

10 Things Ubuntu Needs To Improve On

Ubuntu has been a force to be reckoned within the Linux world for a couple of years now. It’s undeniably the path to Linux gaining mainstream acceptance. In this article, I’ll examine ten areas where I think Ubuntu could go still further; that is, really improve and even gain back those who abandoned it out of frustration.

read more | digg story

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Beer helps to increase bust sizes!: But How?

Men will love this product, they all love beer and boobs, for a man the two just seem to go together, I have been out many time with my other half and caught him having a sneaky look at some girls who are, shall we say well endowed.

read more | digg story

Dueling videogames "Guitar Hero," "Rock Band" face off

The October 28 launch of "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock" struck the first chord in a highly anticipated battle of the bands between music-based videogames that will only get louder when rival "Rock Band" arrives November 20.

read more | digg story

CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing

CSS is ten years old this year. Such an anniversary is an opportunity to revisit the past and chart the future. CSS has fundamentally changed web design by separating style from structure. It has provided designers with a set of properties that can be tweaked to make marked-up pages look right—and CSS3 proposes additional properties requested by de

read more | digg story

US military holds robot race

Robot-steered cars festooned with laser sensors and moving cameras sped through a California ghost town in a race organised by the American military.

read more | digg story

The inconvenient truth about carbon footprint calculators

If you drive your big SUV from your suburban McMansion a few times a week to pick up a bag of McBurgers to go, you're leaving behind more than just a few uneaten fries and some packaging.

read more | digg story

Firefox fixes Windows woes

Firefox 2.0.0.9, released late last week, fixes several issues that plagued some Windows users after they installed version 2.0.0.8.

read more | digg story

Is Facebook the next Netscape?

Marc Andreessen’s Ning team has put together a screencast and screenshots of OpenSocial in action. He notes that the examples are a little light on social functionality at this point, but they are working on getting user’s friends information and activities feeds into the applications.

read more | digg story

Saturday, November 03, 2007

How to fix a Navy submarine server

The fly-on-the-wall recruitment advert shows an IT technician aboard a submarine, making repairs to a submarine's servers.

read more | digg story

Bloomberg dreams of jamming cell phone signal in schools

Cell phones are already banned in New York City public schools but Mayor Michael Bloomberg would like to take it a step further and jam the signal for the kids who still bring them. Problem is, it's against the law to do so.

read more | digg story

Electronic Arts Posts 2Q Net Loss

The company has been criticized this year for not investing enough in games for the Nintendo Wii, which has become a runaway best-seller among the three major game consoles.

read more | digg story

Banned video game's secret scenes unlocked by Hackers

HACKERS have reportedly unlocked hidden scenes of violence in the newly-released game Manhunt 2.

read more | digg story

Nintendo finally ends support for original NES

Nintendo has finally decided to stop support for the original Nintendo Entertainment System, 24 years after the system's launch.

read more | digg story

Sony PS3 U.S. Price Cut Is Official

The PlayStation 3 gaming console officially gets its second price cut in less than a year.

read more | digg story

The Rise of PDF Spam

PDF Spam is an increasing problem and now accounts for around 20% of spam. This whitepaper examines the rise of PDF Spam; how it has evolved and how it works. Learn how spammers are adapting their techniques and increasingly switching to new formats to bypass traditional spam filters.

read more | digg story

Friday, November 02, 2007

Corporate America scrambles as oil heads to $100

As oil heads toward $100 per barrel, Corporate America is scrambling to offset the cost by cutting back on energy use where it can and pushing through higher prices where it can't.

read more | digg story

Stop annoying co-workers with FREE subliminal MP3s

Sooth the office bully, tame that obnoxious guy on the next cubicle, earn the love of that secretary ;).

read more | digg story

Microsoft swoops in to claim Nigerian Linux deal for Windows

Linux vendor Mandriva SA thought it had signed a deal with Nigeria's government to equip elementary schools in that country with new PCs running the open-source operating system as part of a pilot project. But then Microsoft Corp. threw a wrench into the works, according to Mandriva CEO Francois Bancilhon.

read more | digg story

Don't Buy Linux From Wal-Mart

The only problem is that it's really more of a Google network PC that could easily be run on hardware that costs significantly less than $199.

read more | digg story

Frustrated BMW owner tired of the bullshit

A frustrated man yoked two buffaloes to his BMW and drove them through downtown Hefei, Anhui Province, on Sunday, to vent his anger at the car's poor quality.

read more | digg story

Death by Plank still exists in the 21st century

The woman had come to the western Swedish town for a visit in July. She met the 24-year-old at a popular nightclub one evening and the two ended up leaving the venue together.

read more | digg story

Ten tips for managing tricky techies

It's wrong to stereotype people. It isn't wrong, however, to recognise classifications of the team members you deal with every day.

read more | digg story

How to manage invoicing and receivables as an independent consultant

Once you’re in business for yourself, the third question you have to ask (after you’ve successfully answered “where do I find any business?” and “how do I get it all done?”) is “how do I bill and keep track of who owes me money?”

read more | digg story

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Recover your privacy at work with this awesome cubicle design

The Eclipse Office Partitioning System was developed to address the issue of privacy and lack there-of in open plan designs seen in workplaces today. Cubicles don’t exactly illicit hard work so Designer Marcus Curran wanted to create something for the not too distant future.

read more | digg story

Big Brother gets BIGGER, Cellphones team up to become smart CCTV

Software that turns groups of ordinary camera cellphones into a "smart" surveillance network has been developed by Swiss researchers. The team says it will release the software for programmers and users to experiment with.

read more | digg story

Attention K-Mart Shoppers: Blue-ray can go to hell

As HD-DVD players have dropped below $200, Blu-ray is starting the feel the pressure. In one such move, Kmart has decided to drop Blu-ray players from its stores, mostly because of pricing.

read more | digg story

Mozilla, Microsoft At Odds Over Next JavaScript

Mozilla Chief Technology Officer Brendan Eich and Microsoft's Chris Wilson are trading heated rhetoric over the proposed next version of ECMAScript, better known as JavaScript.

read more | digg story

Bebo joins OpenSocial, set to announce API for converting Facebook apps

Social-networking site Bebo, which has made its most significant inroads among young people in the U.K., is set to announce that it has joined Google's OpenSocial project, joining the ranks of MySpace, Imeem, LinkedIn, Six Apart, and a laundry list of other participants that seems to encompass any social-networking site that isn't Facebook.

read more | digg story

FireCAT version 1.2 released

FireCAT is a Firefox Framework Map collection of the most useful security oriented extensions.

read more | digg story

Nintendo details pair of new Wii Channels

Last week we learnt that Nintendo has two new Wii Channels in the pipeline: one to offer Virtual Console and WiiWare games as gifts to fellow Wii owners, and another that acts as a detailed electronic programme guide for television programmes.

read more | digg story