Rob Beschizza

Sidekick servers "impacted" by outage.

T-Mobile's Sidekick data outage entered its third day on Sunday, according to The Consumerist. The official word:

While we anticipate a significant portion of data services to be restored by Monday, some richer data services may lag. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your patience as we work hard with Danger/Microsoft to resolve this issue. We will continue to keep our customers updated as we have news to share.

Rob Beschizza

Purported PS3 ad sports Nazi imagery

Sony's "edgy" marketing gets it attention, but it's remarkable how tone-deaf it is to what people other than teenage boys will think. It's as if it doesn't see that the story should be "PlayStation 3," not "look how crude and offensive Sony is."

Erwin Rommel, Joan of Arc resurrected by PlayStation 3. [Copyranter via Engadget and Consumerist]

Rob Beschizza

Rocky Mountain Bank sent your banking details to random Gmail account, got judge to shut it down

When Rocky Mountain Bank mistakenly sent banking info to the wrong email address, it demanded that Google tell them who owned this email address. Google: "No." How did Federal Judge James Ware respond? He ordered gmail to close the innocent gmail user's account. [TechDirt]

Deleting an account to delete a single email sent to it? It's not even the sort of thing one can map to useless "best justice money can buy" assumptions about the U.S. legal system. It's just plain stupid, a line of drool linking this clueless bench jockey's bottom lip to 1972's best guess about who should prevail when the interests of businesses conflict with those of the general public. This particular Judge, as you might imagine, has an interesting history.

Steven Leckart

Power On Self Test: Dead Format Device

[via walking on glass via fiction romance]

Steven Leckart

Kodak Can't Decide What To Call Its Next Camera

When The Boston Globe reviewed Kodak's latest pocket handicam, the pub dissed the product's "dreadful" nomenclature. Surely, writer Hiawatha Bray wondered, Kodak can come up with something better than "Zi8."*

Nope!

Which is why they want YOU to name their next video camera.** From now until this coming Monday August 24, you can submit product names on Kodak's corporate blog OR via Twitter &mdash just @ reply Kodak CMO JeffreyHayzlett and hash tag your suggestion with #NameAKodak.

Winner gets a trip to CES 2010 to see the unveiling of the new camera***. 100 runner-ups get a free Kodak Zi8.

Thus far, I can't say the crowd-branding has delivered too many plausible or palatable names. Many of the straightforward entries sound gimmicky ("MILI. You'll sell a mili-on"), familiar ("Zen"), or too hodgepodge-y ("Camvantix"). My favorite non-serious entry is "The Zod," which was posted by a guy named Fabien. Kudos to you, Fabien.

Here's a few quick suggestions of my own:

*The Kodak ZiRule (cause its predecessor does, in fact, rule)
*The Kodak Zzzz (ironic!)
*The Kodak HDude (Jeff Bridges endorses, in character)
*The Kodak J-Allison (lampoon-y!)
*The Kodak Raul (non-sequitur-ial!)

Got any legit and/or hilarious suggestions?

*For the record, I agree the name isn't terrific, but it's certainly not as bad as TrekStor's iBeat blaxx MP3 player from a couple years back.

**As everyone knows, tapping the wisdom of the crowd is the latest and greatest go-to ad/market/content gimmick... or at least it was back in 2006 when Wired dubbed crowdsourcing the "future of corporate R&D."

***The cam pictured above is the Zi8. Kodak hasn't released any photos or details about the new cam. But, I'm guessing it won't look too dissimilar from the Zi8. I've love to be proven wrong! ;)

Rob Beschizza

Carrier can't stop hackers stealing customer info

AT&T is booting "celebrity hacker" Kevin Mitnick off its cellular service. Mitnick's account is a target for script kiddies who think that hacking in and posting his personal details to the web is like winning a boxing match with both the Klitschko brothers at once.

While turfing him out cures a headache, it does reveal that AT&T is unable to secure its users' personal information.

"They can't seem to secure my account," Mitnick told The Register. "And then instead of doing something about it, they try to kill the messenger and want to boot me off their network when all I want them to do is to secure my account so no one gets access to my phone records."

Mitnick said the cellular account has been repeatedly breached over the years, despite a wide range of countermeasures he's followed to prevent the attacks. In recent years, he's committed the password to memory and has deliberately not shared it with anyone or kept it stored on a computer. ...

"There are so many ways into these networks," he said. "They have to take some responsibility, not just silence the people that are filing complaints."

AT&T is looking into whether it encrypts passwords. It isn't quite sure.

Besieged by attacks, AT&T dumps celebrity hacker [Reg]

Steven Leckart

"About as annoying to handle as a wet diaper"

Giant's latest folding bike, the Clip, is uniquely handsome. It has decent components. It folds relatively quickly/easily. It even rides smoothly. My one complaint?

From my full review over at Wired.com:

The little "D" above the fork seems like a natural carrying handle when the bike is folded. Right? Well, it is -- provided you've got the hands of an 11-year-old girl. Try as we might, we simply couldn't find any comfortable way to grasp the "D."

Not a deal breaker, but worth knowing before you spend $1000.

photo by Jonathan Snyder for Wired

Steven Leckart

SanDisk Puts Its $$$ Where Its Slot Is [Yet Again]

SanDisk's $100 Sansa slotRadio player we reviewed previously is another attempt to convince us to adopt the music/media "format of the future" — which is, of course, the company's microSD card.

Last year, you may recall SanDisk launched a huge print marketing campaign that featured billboards of people next to the phrase "Sally found her slot" (yes, I know). The idea was simple: First make consumers understand it's possible to pump music into a phone via memory card. (OK, we got you)... Then try to get them to purchase albums on individual, 1GB cards... for $15 a piece. (Uh, no thanks!).

First of all, if you ask major labels what the real format of the future is, they probably won't say the microSD, but CMX.

Secondly, they're pushing a proprietary player and mix cards with 1,000 songs culled from the Billboard Charts, as if that's appealing on any level.

Here's what's completely asinine about this (and forgive me for re-stating much of what Joel's said previously):

1) A lot of people don't want to hear just 1,000 "hits." They want 10,000 micro-hits. Why not give it to them? That's right, storage is very expensive and hard to come by... Oh wait, no it's not.

2) NO ONE wants to carry and organize potentially hundreds of little microSD cards. Yes, they are small, which makes 'em easier to cart around, but even easier to misplace. Let me buy music digitally (with awesome bonus content/videos, etc.), so I can shove the files I want to hear onto a 32GB card.

3) Instead of zero onboard memory for $100, you can get an iPod Shuffle with 4GB of space for $79. If you don't like the idea of random tracklists, then you can spend $150 for an 8GB iPod nano. Hate Apple? You can pick up an 8GB Zune for $110, which is $10 more than the Sana SlotRadio and won't require you to fuss with physical cards.

Good luck, SanDisk!

[via Uncrate]

Steven Leckart

Why I'm Buying An MSI Laptop

Yes, this ad shamelessly rips off Levi's. Yes, the concept is silly. But, man, do I love it. Apparently much more so than our friends at Gizmodo and Gadget Lab, who aren't too keen on the notion of catching a laptop in your buttocks.

Lighten up, fellas!

In fact, go watch some Tim & Eric (NSFW).

[via Gizmodo via Gadget Lab]

Rob Beschizza

AT&T unable to fix broken iPhone voicemail

AT&T is failing to deliver voice mail to iPhones, and has been failing at this for weeks. MG Seigler offers his horror story, which leads him to imagine a world in which Verizon carries the iPhone.

In our own mailbox is a similar tale, from someone who was told by AT&T that it can do little to resolve the issue.

Jean Hagan of the Institute for the Future (Pesco works there) is among those affected, and spent more than an hour prizing information out of customer service. AT&T confirmed that the outage affects users in California: if it's affecting you, you should call 611 and log a complaint so they "can work efficiently with Apple" to deal with it.

Those affected couldn't even manually check your messages--they'd get an error message instead--meaning you'd have to dial in, just like in the olden days. Here's Jean:

She told me they have been having problems for over a week with tons of reports.

I asked her if they plan to notify users and she said "Well, we have been instructed to apologize, log all complaints to escalate with Apple, and if needed negotiate the service for the month", and I was appalled that she said there was currently no resolution.

Then she recommended that ... you could move your sim card to, say an old RAZR, you'd be able to see our message index, etc.

AT&T seems simply unable to deal with the iPhone on its network: its 3G is slower in real-world tests than Sprint and Verizon's "2.75G" Evdo Rev. A network, and that's when 3G works at all. For consumers, it's an inconvenience; for business, it's a big red banner over the iPhone saying "Do Not Buy This."

Steven Leckart

PARC: Un-fumbling the Future

In 1983, my former professor and friend Howard Rheingold read an article by Alan Kay. Immediately, he wanted to experience the Alto and the future of networked minds. He started calling PARC on a weekly basis. Nothing. Then when he called back to remind HR of his existence, he was given an immediate assignment: write a last-minute speech for a Xerox executive.

With that, Howard had landed himself his "dream job" at PARC as an in-house writer. Howard's gig involved interviewing researchers and scientists about their work with interfaces, LAN, etc. Super cool in retrospect and at the time, I'm sure.

He goes into great detail in his book Tools for Thought (pictured), which explores batch processing, the 1960s, time sharing, and more at Xerox PARC. Howard's insights into the successes and failures of Xerox PARC are well worth a read.

Here's how he framed PARC's trajectory and missed opportunity in his Wired article from 1994:

Personal computers did not spring naturally from the computer industry. They were deliberately realized by a radical fringe, against all the force of the day's accepted wisdom... These zealous wizards handed Xerox an astounding lead in information technology in the early 1980s, but by the end of the decade, Xerox watched as upstarts like Apple and Microsoft grew wealthy off Xerox's discoveries. Neither Apple nor Microsoft even existed when the first Altos were designed in the early 1970s; by 1990 either company could have bought Xerox. The tragicomic Xerox saga is recorded in Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander's Fumbling the Future.

Here's the question he ended his 1994 article with:

So how will PARC guarantee that this time they won't fumble their new future? Three ways, says JSB [John Seely Brown]. "One, we are more careful about intellectual property. Two, we are working smart - looking for entrepreneurial partnerships to develop ideas quickly. And three, Xerox has radically repositioned its organization so that its corporate strategy is shaped and informed by PARC and PARC is being shaped and informed by corporate strategy."

And, of course, here's what eventually happened:

By 2002, PARC became in independent research business with the ability to license its own patented tech and discoveries to other companies, institutions, and start-ups, especially the recent wave of alternative energy upstarts. While there are still ties to Xerox, PARC's profits are entirely its own. What's more, I'm told revenue is even split up among PARC employees.

Lessons learned.

Rob Beschizza

OSX Hypnowheel Pin Badge

It's just a dollar at Bean Forest. Spotted by Cult of Mac.

Steven Leckart

Tick Removers: Which Do You Use?

"Uh, I think I snapped it..."

I got my first tick on the BBG camping trip. I was lucky. I didn't even know it was there until it was gone. I brushed it off in the shower somehow without leaving any of the tick in my body *knock wood*. My completely uneducated guess is the hot water must have shocked the little bugger, and when I inadvertently passed my hand over him, he backed out and/or fell out because he had yet to burrow? (if you're a tick expert, feel free to weigh in).

Next time, I won't be so lucky, which is why I'm going to: a) use bug spray, and b) pick up a legit tick remover just in case. Cause there's no way I'm going to try the above method.

Here's a series of tick removers, including one that uses cryotherapy. I'm tempted to buy the one with a mini-lasso and just call it a day. Before I do, though, please feel free to chime in with any suggestions, experiences or links to videos of yourself removing ticks.

Steven Leckart

Video: Overeager Fanboy Bum Rushes 3G S Launch, Gets Blocked

Here's the #1 guy in line at the San Francisco Apple Store being told to hold his horses for the iPhone 3GS. There's something about that moment of "not yet, dude" that I just love.

Yes, I know the image quality isn't too hot. For what it's worth, I was using the Nokia N97 &mdash review forthcoming

Update: #1 fanboy is Adam Jackson. (thanks Doctor Popular!)

Joel Johnson

iTunes Store failure temporarily bricking iPhones during 3.0 upgrade

The final step of upgrading the iPhone to the new 3.0 operating system is failing, as it appears that the iTunes Store has collapsed under the weight of millions of phones trying to authorize at once. (Complaints are trending on Twitter by the hundreds.)

Without the final authorization from iTunes, the new firmware doesn't activate—bricking the iPhones and leaving them only able to make emergency calls. I know this, because I'm staring at my own bricked 3G.

It is advised to wait a few hours for the store to come back online before upgrading if you want to, you know, use your phone.

Update: And mine just activated. I had to unplug and replug about half a dozen times.

Steven Leckart

Gadget Accessories: Are These Do's Or Don'ts?

If you're going to sport a full-on utility belt, as opposed to a more diminutive one, should it be mandatory that you also wear some legit combat gear, ninja boots, or a Batman cape?

Or are bikini-clad, big sunglasses-wearing, cigarette-smoking 20-somethings somehow entitled to co-opt anything and everything when it comes to fashion?

After the jump, other geeky tech accessories that are difficult to pull off, unless maybe you are a bikini-clad 20-something.*

This post is part of a theme day: BBG on Fashion

*Disclaimer: I'm just making conversation. I don't really care what anyone wears.**

*Actually, I lied. No one should wear this booze belt.

photo: zaigee

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Hey D-Link, you've got some unhappy customers

There are beaucoup problems with the D-Link DGL4500 router thanks to driver updates that cause periodic reboots, and customers claim that D-Link is brushing them off. Nerd rage is the best rage.

Iconeater writes:

Dlinks DGL4500 router, a year of defective firmware updates four in total. Must reboot it ever 3 to 4 days.

This story needs to be told as the DGL line was once a rock solid router and now, over the last year it's been crippled by defective firmware.

Can not downgrade to original firmware 1.02 and some new routers are shipping with the first defective fw version 1.12 or 1.15 leaving customers no options.

Please share this story so others know. The price point for this router is down as low as $130 from it's launch price of $250 which will be very attractive for those looking to buy. Other than the forum which is only accessible via the firmware page so potential customers might not find it there are no sites talking about this

Steven Leckart

Social Networking Make Trent Mad!

In a lengthy rant on nin.com, Trent Reznor writes:

I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it's now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.

All this from the guy who spent the last few years going deep into ARGs, online forums, and Twitter.

[via Pitchfork]

image by Andra Veraart

Joel Johnson

iPhone 3G S: World's Best Phone Saddled to World's Worst Carrier

The new iPhone 3G S looks like a fine upgrade: For $300, it offers twice the storage, twice the speed, and a new camera with autofocus and video capabilities. But that price is only available if you're a new customer to AT&T. According to Apple's Buy iPhone 3G page's fine print [emphasis mine]:

For non-qualified customers, including existing AT&T customers who want to upgrade from another phone or replace an iPhone 3G, the price with a new two-year agreement is $499 (8GB), $599 (16GB), or $699 (32GB). Visit www.wireless.att.com for eligibility information.

It is typical for phone providers to offer new-phone prices for customers, provided they sign another two-year contract. Strangely, many of the AT&T customers in an uproar on Twitter are finding that it may be even cheaper to cancel an AT&T contract, pay the early termination fee, and sign up for a new two-year contract to get the iPhone 3G S.

Coupled with the fact that two of the major new features of the iPhone 3.0 operating system—the ability to tether the iPhone to a laptop as a modem and MMS—will not even be available until the end of summer. (AT&T has said they'll support tethering soon, but haven't said when.)

It's a good day for Sprint, though—they might want to bump up that Pre advertising around the June 19th iPhone 3G S launch date.

Image: Rschappo2002

Update: Sam Diaz:

But MMS requires carrier support and Apple is proud to say that 29 carrier partners in 76 countries - whose corporate logos were displayed on the big screen - are ready to go. Then, in almost a bit of a whisper and certainly more of an after-thought, it was mentioned that AT&T would support MMS in the U.S. later this summer. Immediately, the crowd erupted in laughter.

Steven Leckart

Video Gallery: Big Surf Wipeouts Are Gnarly

I wipe out on 3-5 ft waves often. It sucks. But I cannot even begin to imagine what a wipeout of this magnitude feels like.

After the jump, more crushing spills...

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

"Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension"

Brian Krebs:

Big deal, you say? I can just uninstall the add-on via Firefox's handy Add-ons interface, right? Not so fast. The trouble is, Microsoft has disabled the "uninstall" button on the extension. What's more, Microsoft tells us that the only way to get rid of this thing is to modify the Windows registry, an exercise that -- if done imprecisely -- can cause Windows systems to fail to boot up.

Joel Johnson

New HDMI 1.4 standard offers just five confusing options

BusinessWire press release:

Consumers will have a choice of the following HDMI cables:

• Standard HDMI Cable - supports data rates up to 1080i/60;
• High Speed HDMI Cable - supports data rates beyond 1080p, including Deep Color and all 3D formats of the new 1.4 specification;
• Standard HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity;
• High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet - includes Ethernet connectivity;
• Automotive HDMI Cable - allows the connection of external HDMI-enabled devices to an in-vehicle HDMI device.

Steven Leckart

Aeroelasticity and the Incredible, Bendable Bridge

On November 7, 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge failed during a windstorm. During construction, workers had reported* a noticeable amount of "galloping" (some give is desirable), but nothing like what occurred on November 7. As 42 mph gusts pummeled the four-month-old suspension bridge, the road started to oscillate visibly. At one point, one side of the road was 28 feet higher than the other (at 05:03 you can see two folks stumbling across the bridge).

After an hour, a number of the bridge's cables snapped, forcing the center span to collapse. The cause: aeroelastic flutter. Essentially, the amplitude of the oscillations increased exponentially as the wind continued to hit the bridge. When the energy grew greater than what the bridge was naturally built to absorb (called "damping")... well, boom went the dynamite. This is why today's bridge designers put their models through wind tunnels.

Today, the old Tacoma Bridge's steel girders and half-mile of roadway comprise one of the world's largest human-made reefs in the waters of Puget Sound.

In 2004, Shawn Frayne used the concept of aeroelastic flutter to develop the "Windbelt", a small device that generates energy by placing magnets at the ends of a small fluttering belt. His company, Humdinger, is working to commercialize the devices. The Windbelt is not yet available for sale.

Humdinger's FAQ explains the difference between "resonance" and aeroelastic flutter: "While the effect of aeroelastic flutter is not necessarily a resonant effect, but rather a positive feedback loop that reaches a limit cycle, some variations of the Windbelt technology do use resonance between two or more components on the generators to increase efficiency."

*It's said they chewed lemons to combat nausea on the job.

Joel Johnson

Eucalyptus ebook reader app allowed on iTunes

Proving that the best way to publicity for your iPhone app is to have one of the prudish worrywarts that attend Apple's iTunes proving grounds ban your application, the ebook app "Eucalyptus" has been sheepishly led into the App Store after all. Good news all around the the developer, who now is left with only the challenge of explaining to the public why they should pay $10 for an ebook app when Stanza is available for free.

(Here's a starter: Amazon, makers of the Kindle ebook device, as well as a free iPhone ebook reader, recently acquired Lexcycle, makes of Stanza. So if you'd like to support an independent developer until his company is acquired...)

Joel Johnson

FCC claims warrantless search if you use Wi-Fi, baby monitor

Ryan Singel:

You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.

That's the upshot of the rules the agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency device.

"Anything using RF energy -- we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference," says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.

Joel Johnson

Asian camera doesn't understand Asian eyes

Joz got her mother a new camera. It seems to have just enough intelligence to say the wrong thing.

I feel sorry for manufacturers. First they had to teach their gadgets how to think—now they have to teach them tact.

Joel Johnson

Sling Media, Apple, and AT&T: A confederacy of douches

AT&T and Apple's arbitrary decision to forbid the streaming media iPhone app SlingPlayer to be allowed to operate over 3G, for fear of saturating AT&T's network, was—if I may adopt the tenor of a business analyst here—super douchey. Eliot Van Buskirk sums up the situation tidily.

But considering that Sling Media offered weak excuses about why its older models did not fully support the $30 application—did I mention it's a $30 iPhone application?—it doesn't sound like it's much of a loss. The planned obsolescence would be more forgivable if the iPhone app were free.

I actually understand AT&T's hesitancy to approve this use of their fragile 3G network, as horribly short-sighted as it may be, but the hoops they jump through to try to justify it are typically gymnastic:

"Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service," stated AT&T. "We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs."

However, this policy is obviously inconsistent. Owners of the Samsung Blackjack, Motorola Q, Blackberry, and other smartphones are able to stream Slingbox content over AT&T's 3G network. Only Sling's iPhone app is crippled in this way.

Joel Johnson

This picture of an ATM put a vegan anarchist in jail

Enjoy this picture of the inside of an ATM—Shane Becker was arrested at a Seattle REI for snapping it, after the two bank agents who were filling it freaked out and called the cops. Becker is the sort of guy who would have the banner of his site be a picture of him in a bandana like a sort of hard bikin', REI-shoppin' anarchist, but we can at least agree that getting arrested for taking a picture in a store is bullshit.

Joel Johnson

USPS insurance is fickle

Did you know that if you insure something through the United States Postal Service for a certain amount—say $3,000 to cover your five new laptops—and then they are lost or destroyed, the Postal Service retains the right to determine the worth of your goods? That happened to a man who just got offered $74 for five new Lenovo laptops. [Consumerist]

Steven Leckart

Apple censors NIN iPhone app

Nine Inch Nails' first iPhone app "nin: access" launched a few weeks ago, but was recently rejected for violating the no-obscene/pornographic/offensive/defamatory-content section of the iPhone SDK agreement.

Frontman Trent Reznor explained via tweet:

Apple rejects the NIN iPhone update because it contains objectionable content. The objectionable content referenced is "The Downward Spiral"

Much of that album's lyrics are NSFW, so Apple's position makes sense.

Wait. No it doesn't.

Reznor posted an official rebuttal to the NIN forum. Here's the core of his argument (warning: he drops the f-bomb):

You can buy The Downward Fucking Spiral on iTunes, but you can't allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it... Hey Apple, I just got some SPAM about fucking hot asian teens THROUGH YOUR MAIL PROGRAM. I just saw two guys having explicit anal sex right there in Safari! On my iPhone!

Apple: 0
Reznor: 1

[via Pitchfork]