Filed under: ComputersAll the rumor-mongers were right: Apple announced the MacBook Air, the world's thinnest laptop. This beauty comes in at a ridiculous .16 inches thin -- so thin that it fits in a manila envelope. It features a full-size keyboard, so there are no compromises as far as usability goes. It also has a 13.3-inch display, built-in iSight camera, and a new, larger trackpad which does all the cool iPhone-like things like zooming, pinching, and scrolling. It has an 80-gig drive built in unless you want to upgrade to a 64-gig solid-state (no moving parts) drive.Do we want one? Heck yes. It starts at $1799 and ships in 2-3 weeks. Go get 'em!%Gallery-13916%Also from Apple Today:Software Updates for iPhone and iPod TouchMovie Rentals Hit iTunes (in HD, too)Apple's New TimeCapsule Wireless Backup Hard Drive / Wireless Router Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: Computers, Google, iPhoneAs part of a Macworld makeover - coinciding with the annual Mac love-fest in San Francisco where the biggest Apple announcements are made - Google today announced a revamped Gmail application for use on iPhones.According to Google, the upgrades were in response to user-requested features, notably pre-fetching (where email is downloaded automatically) and auto-complete (where words and addresses are finished with suggested letters as you type), and implemented with the AJAX web development tools.AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Basically, web applications developed with AJAX are able to perform lots of tasks behind the scenes and without requiring the user to reload the whole web page each time a new command or request is made. This makes the applications, especially for mobile devices like the iPhone, much more responsive and less data-intensive. (For the truly techy among you, click here to learn more.)With address auto complete, Google claims most email addresses can be completed within two or three keystrokes. With the preload feature, your most recent messages will already be loaded into your device, meaning no more long waits for the text to be revealed. Both are features that make us happy. After all, we're already accustomed to such functionality on our Blackberrys and our Palm Treos.From Official Gmail Blog.Related links:Google Releases iPhone-Friendly Versions of Its Pages and ServicesGmail Gets Major UpgradeNew Google Maps Mobile Finds Your Location Without GPS  Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: Computers, Video Games, TVPBS just opened up its new online service aimed at children called 'PBS Kids Play!' The activities are aimed at children ages 3-6 and is currently available for a free trial as part of the beta test. When the trial ends, parents will be asked to cough up $79 for the year, or $9.95 a month.Currently the application only officially supports Windows XP, or Vista. A web version of the edu-tainment games are available to users of Mac OS X and Linux, but let's just say it's still a little buggy. Kids play games with characters from various PBS shows such as 'Curious George,' 'The Berenstain Bears,' 'Bob the Builder,' and even 'Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.'PBS Kids Play! is not a social networking service. There is no interaction between children or with children, so safety shouldn't be a concern. Parents can however sign in and check a child's progress in the educational activities or set time limits on play. At $79 a year, the subscription is a bit on the pricey side. But PBS Kids Play! is definitely more useful than that tote bag PBS is always pushing.From ReutersRelated links:Kids Spend Too Much Time Online, Says ParentsComputer Training for TotsVideo Game Teaches Healthy Eating, Discourages Slothfulness Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: Cell Phones, iPod, iPhoneAs if the plethora of other announcements out of the boys in Cupertino weren't enough today, Apple is also unleashing a software update for the iPhone and iPod Touch. As we mentioned in December, the iPhone update to 1.1.3 adds a whole host of new features, including an update to the Google Maps app with location, which pinpoints your... well, location, using cell phone tower triangulation. The update also allows the customization of the home screen, and gives you up to 9 home screens to customize. Add web clips (glorified home screen bookmarks), text message several people at once (finally!), and now your iPod media will have subtitles, chapters, and lyrics.The iPod touch picks up all the same feature s (minus the SMS and Location), and finally gets Mail, Maps, Stocks, Notes and Weather just like the iPhone. The downside? The iPod touch update will cost $20, which is pretty surprising to us. The update will be installed on all iPod Touches shipping from this point on so we're kind of confused as to why Apple would charge for the update. Our advice -- wait it out. The complaints are bound to pile up until Apple changes course, just like with the Airport Extreme N update, or iPhone price drop.From EngadgetRelated links:New MacBook Air, World's Thinnest LaptopApple's New Time Capsule Wireless Hard DriveMovie Rentals Hit iTunes (Plus a New Apple TV) Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: Computers, MySpaceOn the same day MySpace and the attorneys general for 49 states announced an agreement that will allow parents to have their kids' email addresses blocked from the social networking site we get this tragic story out of Florida:A Tampa man met two girls, aged 14 and 12, through MySpace and met up with them to have sex. After the 14-year-old confided in her parents about what happened, the police nabbed the pervert after he attempted a second meeting with the younger girl.Turn your irony sensors on now: When arrested he was wearing a shirt that read "Real Men of Genius." See the referenced story for the picture. And that's the long and short of the humor here. Irony sensors off now. Thank you.Nothing is funny about a predator skulking around MySpace looking for victims. It will be interesting to see how many parents take advantage of the new offering by the social networking site to let them block their children from signing up. Granted, this relies on the parents submitting their kids' email addresses in order to have them blocked, which may not be enough considering how easy it is to set up a new free email account. But at least it is a start.What would you do to protect your kids from online predators? What do you do to protect yourself when you go online yourself?From Tampa Bay's 10 and The New York Times. Related links:Can Privacy Exist on the Internet?Stalker Alert -- 53 Percent of Adults Google OthersTeens Still Prefer Landline Phones, Says Study Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: Audio/Video, Computers, TVWell, we all knew it was coming. The rumors have been circulating for so long that it's more been a matter of when rather than if. At today's MacWorld keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that he has finally struck a deal to put movie rentals on iTunes. Pretty much all the major movie studios --Touchstone, MGM, Miramax, Lions Gate, Fox, WB, Walt Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Sony -- have all signed on to provide rentals at $2.99 for older films and $3.99 for new releases. Like pretty much every other online movie service and Vudu, the iTunes movie rental service, which launches today, gives you 30 days to watch a chosen film, but after you hit play, you have just 24 hours to complete the movie before your rental expires. The files can be transfered to iPods and Apple TVs, though, so you can start watching the movie while it's still downloading your computer's iTunes, then copy it over to your iPod (or Apple TV) and finish watching it somewhere else later that day.Apple also unveiled Apple TV Take 2, which essentially amounts to a new interface for the Apple TV that makes it independent of a computer. The update lets you access the full iTunes store directly from your Apple TV and rent DVD-quality movies to watch on your TV (or buy music and audiobooks to listen to on your TV/home theater system). And, for just a dollar more, you can get HD quality video and 5.1 surround sound. The Apple TV will still sync to your PC or Mac, if you have one. The revamped Apple TV ships in two weeks for $229. The best part is that current Apple TV users aren't left out in the cold. Jobs admitted that Apple hadn't exactly hit the nail on the head with the original Apple TV, and is offering the new UI and features as a free download to all current Apple TV users. For once, some of Apple's early adopters are getting taken care of!So, does this mean you should forget Blu-ray and just pick up a new Apple TV? Maybe, though we're going to reserve our final judgment until we find out whether the HD offered is highest-quality 1080p or not (as with Blu-ray) and if every one of the 1,000 or so films Apple is promising to have available by year's end is also available in HD.That said, we won't say don't rent movies from iTunes. We've got iPods just like everyone else, and we'd be dumb not to partake of this latest offering from Apple. We just want to see if Apple really has a decent selection of HD movies, since no one else -- other than the Blu-ray camp (and only recently) -- seems to have pulled this off.From EngadgetRelated links:Apple's New Time Capsule Wireless Hard DriveApple Announces New MacBook Air, World's Thinnest LaptopNetflix Preempts Apple with Unlimited Movie Downloads Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: Audio/Video, ComputersIn the war between Netflix and Blockbuster for online rental domination, it sure looks like Netflix has come out ahead. As Blockbuster suffers layoffs and other financial woes, Netflix traffic from subscribers is way up, far past competition. That battle isn't quite over yet, but for Netflix it's time to start a second fight on a second front: online downloads. Its latest strike is to make "Instant" downloadable movies unlimited for most subscribers. Netflix launched the streaming service back in early 2007 as "Watch it Now," but it got a retooling and a renaming when it was hacked in August. The service lets you stream one of hundreds of films and television series collections from the Netflix site through a web browser. Right now it sadly only works through Internet Explorer on Windows, making its applicability somewhat limited. Instead of opening it up to other browsers (and Macs), Netflix chose to remove any limits on hours of viewing per month on subscribers. This move comes ahead of an anticipated announcement from Apple of movie rentals from iTunes. This, combined with competition from Amazon's downloadable service and similar offerings from Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace, means the downloadable rental space is finally heating up.Can Netflix win both in the disc-based media realm as well as the online direct-download area? Its legion of dedicated subscribers will certainly be pulling from it, but Apple fans certainly don't lack dedication themselves. From ConsumeristRelated Links: Blockbuster Heading for the Dustbins of History? Netflix Seeing Four Times As Much Traffic as Blockbuster Netflix "View It Now" Service Hacked - Users Downloading Movies Netflix-Style Rentals Coming from Apple iTunes?  Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: ComputersWith all the rumors flying about an Apple subnotebook, and new Apple TVs, we're sure most of you didn't have your money on an Apple NAS (Network Attached Storage) box, but that's exactly what we got in the form of Apple's Time Capsule. Time Capsule is a companion piece for Time Machine, the automated back up system built in to OS X.The box essentially combines a hard drive and an Airport Extreme N adapter for wireless communication with all of the Macs in your home, if you have more than one. The Time Capsule can be set to automatically backup all of the Macs you own on a regular basis, taking what little thought there is left in process out.Prices however aren't too pretty. The 500 gigabyte capsule will run $299 and the 1 terrabyte model will cost a whopping $499 or about twice what you could get an external 1 terabyte drive for.From Engadget Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: Cell Phones, Computers, Green TechYou know that somewhat discomforting warmth that comes from your cell phone when you use it? A lot of people joke that it's the radiation slowly cooking your brain, but really it's just a combination of the heat from the battery, the processors inside your phone, and of course your face. Any time any mechanical or electrical device gets warm (excepting toasters and hair driers and the like) it's a sign of wasted electricity, and two teams of researchers are working on ways to capture that heat and turn it back into power.The researchers are focusing on the use of nanowires to capture this heat and generate electricity from it. Nanowires are just what they sound like: wires that are very, very small. You'd have to lay somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 of these nanowires side-by-side to equal the width of a human hair. Bundles of the wires are placed between heat sources and, with some chemical and electrical tweaking, are capable of conducting electricity when a temperature difference is applied to them. Cell phones are the first mentioned application, but think about a car that uses exhaust heat instead of an alternator, or a laptop that charges its battery instead of warming up your lap. The potential is exciting, but is in the very early stages of experimentation, so you won't be finding nanowire regenerative charging in your next gadget for a few years at the very least.From textually.org and Cellular NewsRelated Links: Fast Food Heat Lamps Can Cure Hemorrhoids Your Gadgets Powered By Body Heat iSolarX Jacket Charges Your Gadgets  Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: Cell PhonesWe need to jump in here and stop the spread of some misinformation. A story that started as a round of Ask Metafilter (a blog that seeks answers by harvesting the minds of commenters) has been picked up by a number of big name blogs. We're not sure if the others went back and read the original post, or if they all just got their info from the first blog to pick it up, but they all managed to get the facts wrong.We're about to get a little technical here, but read along. This is actually pretty interesting stuff if you like to know how your cell phone works.The question? "What exactly do those cell phone reception bars represent?" The answer is a technical explanation, that is admittedly not very clearly phrased, but careful reading reveals that despite what others are reporting, cell phone signal bars do not represent noise floor levels or EC/I0, which essentially represents the amount of usable signal a cell phone has.EC/I0 (ee see over eye naught) plays an important role in your ability to place a call, but due to wild fluctuations, you would never see it visually represented on a phone in the form of bars. If EC/I0 were measured, your signal would vary constantly from 4 bars to 1 bar and back, often in a matter of seconds. This would be very unsettling to the user. Instead, the bars measure absolute signal strength, which is measured in dBµV/m, or decibel-microvolts per metre.The problem with measuring cell reception is that there is no industry standard for measuring signal strength. What is 2 bars on one phone may be 4 bars on an other. This can vary even among phones from the same manufacturer. Additionally, EC/I0 measurements can have more of an influence over reception than signal strength. That is even if you have 4 bars sometimes you'll be unable to place a call, but occasionally be able to place a call fine with no interference, even with no bars. So the simple answer to ""what exactly do those cell phone reception bars represent?" Nothing of much value.From Ask MetafilterRelated links:Most Cell Phones Still End Up In Landfills, Polluting the EnvironmentHaywire Cell Phone Sends 4,700 Text Messages OvernightBluetooth Headsets You'll Want This Year Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Proving that online petitions don't always get the job done, English Parliament has decided to reject a rather curious e-petition -- with all of its 655 e-signatures: namely, to allow UK pet shops to sell elephants. From the petition: We believe that every child in the UK would benefit from owning an elephant. It was my dream as a child to care for these magnificent creatures but at the age of twelve I find that nobody takes me seriously. We would like to make it legal to import african/indian elephants from africa/india to sell in pet shops across the UK. Elephants are creatures that children could learn about better by owning their own and keeping them in easily and cheaply converted sheds. Please take my idea into account. Jack Smithies.The guv'nment, however, wasn't quite so open to the idea. From its response:The Government agrees that keeping a pet has many benefits, not just for children but people of all ages. However, the Government does not think elephants would make good pets. They are very large animals that are not used to being kept as pets, and have welfare needs that would be impossible to meet in pet shops or people's homes. Elephants can also be dangerous, and it would not be safe for people to be able to keep them in their back yard.Wasn't there a Simpson's episode about this? Yes, yes there was. From FARKRelated links: Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: ComputersFor those of you not in the total know, MacWorld -- otherwise known as Steve Jobs' keynote -- starts in about two hours at noon Eastern. Expect to see some relatively big announcements from Apple, including a much-rumored sub-notebook called "Apple Air." Stay tuned. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: Computers, MySpaceMySpace takes a lot of heat for not doing enough to protect the younger members of its site. The site has repeatedly worked with governments to ban sexual offenders, but those efforts have always been reactive to external pressure and bad PR. Now the site is being a little more proactive, announcing a number of measures to help ensure the safety of under-age members.This includes a number of enhancements to the site, including the ability for parents to list the e-mail addresses of their children and prevent them from creating profiles, automatically marking under-age profiles as "private," and responding within 72-hours to any reports of inappropriate content on the site. The company hopes these measures will help to keep kids safe and, of course, keep angry parents off of their backs. But, we can't help but think these measures will be easy to subvert or abuse. It would be a funny joke to list all your friends' e-mail addresses as your children and prevent them from using them to sign up on the site (assuming you have any friends who aren't already on there), but the bigger problem is that there's no way to prevent your kids from going to Hotmail or Gmail and getting another disposable e-mail account to sign up with. And there's still nothing preventing them from lying about their age to make a public profile. Ultimately these changes are positive steps that should help to protect some of the untold thousands of underage MySpace users, but we believe that those who really want to will keep on finding ways around them.From CNNRelated Links: MySpace Bans 29,000 Sex Offenders MySpace Hands Over Sex Offender Data MySpace Asked to Identify Sex Offenders  Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

  Filed under: Computers, eBayThe facility with which you can advertise what you have for sale, whether by eBay or Craigslist, also means you're under scrutiny from the public at large and local authorities. Case in point: a woman in Ontario, Calif., who tried to sell the fixtures and other installed items from her historic home was found out via her Craigslist ads and is now barred from her home by city officials concerned for the integrity of the home.The woman claims nothing of historic value was up for sale, but the city disagreed, and got a Superior Court judge to block her access to the home.We're withholding judgement, though. It seems as though the homeowner has fallen on hard times, as this story ties into the unfortunate larger one of mortgage payments skyrocketing after adjustable rates kicked up in the new year. Her claim? The fixtures and other items were only things she installed herself, since buying the home in 2003.It's a national craze, scouring the basement, garage and yard for eBay-able items. There's even the almost mythic story of the guy who was able to trade up a red paper clip (eventually) to a house.Next time you're thinking of hocking your goods, do a little thinking first. Ask yourself the basic questions, including "is it legal?" Unless, of course, you want us to write about you. In that case, set up a blog and let us link to you. We're always looking for a juicy story.From San Bernardino County Sun.Related Links:Man Caught eBay'ing Stolen Goods from WorkTeacher Steals and eBays Student's JacketHow to Avoid Getting Scammed on eBay and Craigslist Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments