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2005 September

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Music Jamming At A Distance Becomes Reality

What I thought was just a silly-fantasy of a passionate amateur musician like me, has surpassed my wildest expectation and has now turned into an actual product.
After the recent debut of Ninjam, which premiered the immense opportunities available to those who, like me, dreamed of hooking up with far away music partners to jam together […]

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iRiver Customers Take TiVo to Go

Wait a minute. Is iRiver looking to get into the PVR market all of a sudden? Well, not exactly. They do appear however, to be interested in seeing what can be done in the support market for Portable Multimedia Centers.

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Microsoft loses in Eolas patent ruling

Oh this has just got to tick off MS a little bit. It seems that Microsoft has in fact, lost the Eolas patent case after all. Better luck next time, guys.

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Will US-CERT Bring Sanity To Virus Naming?

Bill Brenner of SecuritySearch.com writes:
…It can take an hour or two to track down the new virus because it can be in your system under a completely different file name, he said. Life during an outbreak would be much more orderly if all the AV vendors adopted some common naming element, even if […]

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Samsung to Invest $33 Billion in Making Chips

Free registration required to read the story.
Choe Sang-Hun of the International Herald Tribune writes:
Samsung Electronics said Thursday that it would spend $33 billion to build nine new chip lines in South Korea by 2012, creating 14,000 jobs and going against a tide of cutbacks at its Japanese rivals, Sony and Sanyo.

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The Successful Commoditized Business Of StickerGiant

The path of innovation inevitably seems to end up in the commoditized business graveyard. Time and again, smart, nimble companies invent new technologies or manufacturing processes, just to standardize them, inspire knock-offs, and direct competitors and ultimately find that their unique differentiator in the marketplace has evolved into a commodity and that customers make their […]

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Every Copy of Mad Magazine Scanned and Posted Online for FREE

Mad Magazine played a big part in my childhood - it helped me form my weird sense of humor, and I just loved the whole thing. A guy name Doug Gilford has painstakingly scanned in every cover of Mad since the 1950’s.
If you have a Mad fan in your life, please let them know about […]

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Padlock Opens with Remote Control

As I have been saying here for some time, keys are SO last century. I changed out my front door lock to a locking keypad system and have delighted ever since in its ease of use in change and adding codes, to the “auto-lock” feature that locks the door after a few minutes.
But today I […]

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Skype on a USB Stick

By Sean Fisher, Contributing Writer, RealTechNews
I still haven’t hopped aboard the VoIP bandwagon just yet, but this VoIP-capable USB stick from Mplat might make me think about joining the ranks. The F2K not only allows you to make calls from any PC with internet access (without having to install anything), the flash device also has […]

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Pimp My Rig PC-Style: R2D2 PC Mod

First, we seemed to be going green with our cell phone recycling coverage, but this week is truly turning nerdy ever since Oliver Rist showed up in his 3d headset. So I figured why not turn it up a notch and let the nerd flag fly?
Here’s a guy at PimpRig.com who modded out his […]

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Old School: Atari Is Rereleasing The Atari 2600

David Johnston, Contributing Writer for RealTechNews, writes:
Fans of Atari everywhere should rejoice. The 2600 console, originally released in 1977, has been rereleased so you can play all of your old favorites once again. The “new” console is called the “Flashback 2″ and instead of buying the games separately, they’re included inside the console itself.
Atari’s […]

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Cool But Somewhat Useless Mod Keeps Your iPod Cranking

David Johnston, Contributing Writer for RealTechNews, writes:
If you’re one of those people dissappointed with the battery life of your iPod, this might be worth checking out. Someone over at Geek Technique has modified a hand-crank flashlight to charge their iPod mini.
After much tinkering, modding, and warranty-voiding, he was able to get the setup working. […]

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eMagin’s Z800 3DVisor Brings Gaming To (Half) Life

Oliver Rist, Guest Contributor of RealTechNews, writes:
This thing just screams “new horizon in FPSs.” And you may justifiably ask why? After all, we’re just moving the monitor closer to your eyes, correcto? Correcto, but there’s more. eMagin also added what it’s calling 3D Stereovision. The rest of us call it head-tracking.
So you’re mowing down […]

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New Gruvi SD Card To Replace Music CDs?

The Gruvi MicroSD is a new SD (secure digital) media card aimed squarely at the music market; in fact, aiming squarely to replace the CD format.
The Gruvi cards, which are copy protected by SanDisk’s proprietary “TrustedFlash”, will fit and play in cell phones, mobile devices, and laptops, and come with up to […]

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Congress To Legislate File Swapping?

Anne Broache of CNET News.com writes:
A California senator has suggested that because file-sharing networks continue to house illegal files, they should be shut down.
Intellectual property protection “can’t function in a country where the high-tech services become such that you can’t protect copyright,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said Wednesday at a U.S. Senate […]

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Apple Acknowledges Flaw In iPod Nano

Ina Fried of CNET News.com writes:
Apple Computer is acknowledging a flaw in its new iPod Nano music player, offering to replace for free models that shipped with a defective screen that is prone to cracking.
A company representative said that the issue was a manufacturing, rather than a design problem, and said it affected […]

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The $100 Laptop Moves Closer To Reality

Mike Ricciuti, CNET News.com writes:
A low-cost computer for the masses moved one step closer to reality on Wednesday.
Nicholas Negroponte, the co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, detailed specifications for a $100 windup-powered laptop targeted at children in developing nations.
Negroponte, who laid out his original proposal at the World Economic […]

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Google’s selling ads on specific Web sites?

Dave, rumor has it that Google’s introducing a new “advertise on this site” feature for the top performers in the AdSense program, but I can’t seem to find any specific information about it, and when I go to the AdSense site, there’s no information about it. Do you have any information about this?
By an amazing […]

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Sony’s New VAIO TX Series Made of Carbon Fiber

It always happens, just when you think you have THE cutting edge notebook (and in this case it even comes with EDGE), a new version comes out.
Today Sony Korea announced new VAIO TX series notebooks made of carbon fiber, making them 30% lighter and with up to a nine to fourteen hour battery life. […]

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Whoops! Palm CEO Shows Live Audience Bill Gates’ Cell Phone Number

You have to laugh at this one. Ed Colligan, the very overly eager Palm CEO, demonstrated the new Windows-based Treo 700w with Bill Gates himself and pulled up Bill G’s contact info to prove the device was real. He made a call and Bill got an SMS message, and the crowd applauded I’m sure.
But […]