Retro-tech: a digital Polaroid

What about this idea: take the printer off of your desk and put it in your pocket?
Zink has created--with help from Polaroid--a way to print photographs or documents without ink or an ink cartridge. Without an ink cartridge, the printer can be reduced to the size of an iPod or smaller.

The first two products will likely be a standalone printer and a camera with a built-in printer.
The first printer will cost about $199. Sheets of 100 pieces of paper will go for $19.95.

Source and photo: CNET's Crave

Earn some money with your YouTube videos

YouTube has confirmed to the BBC that it will share the revenue it makes for videos in an attempt to reward creativity. However this revenue will only be "shared" only with those users that are the videos' true copyright owners.

But how will YouTube distinguish between the real copyright owners and those who are just using the content without any permission from among its 70 million users? Perhaps by putting new daddy Google's image-recognition technology to work.

It hardly seems feasible. But let's wait and see...

Source: CNET's Media Blog

European PS3 in March!

Playstation 3 will arrive in Europe on March, 23rd and it will cost 599€. Only the 60Gb version of the game console will be released, hence the huge price.

The fighting and looting to get one of the PS3 will be quite interesting since only 1 million of them will be release for the entire continent. Is that enough??

Source and Images: Engadget, Reuters Tech News

It takes 21 SMS to make a cellphone thief repent!

A Chinese thief has returned a mobile phone and thousands of yuan he stole from a woman after she sent him 21 touching text messages.

Pan Aiying, a teacher in the eastern province of Shandong, had her bag containing her mobile phone, bank cards and 4,900 yuan (in dollars, in euros) snatched by a man riding a motorcycle as she cycled home on Friday. She tried calling her lost phone with her colleague's cell phone but was disconnected. Then she began sending text messages.

Here are some of those messages: "I'm Pan Aiying, a teacher from Wutou Middle School. You must be going through a difficult time. If so, I will not blame you," wrote Pan in her first text message which did not get a response.

"Keep the 4,900 yuan if you really need it, but please return the other things to me. You are still young. To err is human. Correcting your mistakes is more important than anything," Pan wrote.

When finally she thought that she wouldn't be able to retrieve her possessions, on her way out on Sunday morning, she stumbled over a package that had been left in her courtyard only to discover it was her stolen bag. Nothing had been taken.

A letter inside the box said: "Dear Pan: I'm sorry. I made a mistake. Please forgive me. You are so tolerant even though I stole from you. I'll correct my ways and be an upright person."

I wonder if the "21 SMS technique" will work with every thief...

From: Reuters Tech News

DRM for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray cracked already!!

The "straight from Hollywood" DRM standard AACS (Advanced Access Content System) which is used both in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray was already cracked, according to a post in Engadget.

At this time, only the HD-DVD implementation of AACS cracking can be confirmed, but there are already some rumors that the Blu-Ray AACS implementation was cracked as well.

So, the search for an "uncrackable" DRM standard continues...
The question is: will these events affect in any way the acceptance of these new High Definition standards?

Need free pictures?

If you need free (or public domain) pictures for posting on your blog or for some document you need, you can use the Wikipedia's public domain pictures resource repository.

The pictures are categorized according to subject, such as Art, Music, History, etc...

The Nintendo Wii's "Before and After"

As I posted last November, Nintendo's Wii is good for exercising. But now, some proof is starting to come up. Check out Mickey's results:


Mickey DeLorenzo, a 25-year-old living in Philadelphia, decided to run an experiment for six whole weeks, and while he sought to keep his eating habits constant, he devoted 30 minutes per day to Wii Sports and monitored his weight, calories burned per session, body fat percentage and heart rate.

Mickey started out at 182 pounds, and after a month and a half of Wii workouts, managed to take his weight down to 172 pounds.

So, looking for a diet? Buy the new Nintendo Wii's Diet Program Pack...

Source and images: Engadget

Fight crime with your cell phone

New York City plans on recruiting average citizens armed with cell phone cameras to help fight crime. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that the city plans to install new technology so that 911 call centers can receive digital images and videos sent from cell phones and computers.

"If you see a crime in progress or a dangerous building condition you'll be able to transmit images to 911 or online to NYC.gov," he said.
The technology will also eventually be extended to 311, a hot-line established during the mayor's first term in office to deal with nonemergency, quality-of-life concerns.

Source: CNET News

Wireless Energy????

CES 2007 was really a stage for wonderful ideas. A company, named eCoupled has presented a new infrastructure that will support wireless energy supply. It's the beginning of real cordless devices around the office. Excellent idea :-)

Check out this demo video:


Source: Peopleware (Portuguese)

Free Online TV

Wanna see free online TV? Check out CraftyTV. Dozens of recent movies, tv shows and live tv channels with reasonable quality.

Tip from Peopleware (Portuguese)

Google working on its own "iphone"?

Is Google really working on its own version of a iphone-like cellphone: the googlephone? Unnamed sources are saying that Google is teaming up with Samsung on the production of the Google Switch, a button-less touchscreen device only this time with GPS built-in for pinpoint navigation around Google Maps.

According to those unnamed sources, the device doesn't have any on-board storage. All applications are served up over the network with new apps "attached" to an account via a web interface.

Source and photos: Engadget

Searching the Wikipedia

If you're like me, you're probably tired of using the search mechanism in Wikipedia. It just feels like it's not enough, mainly because most of the time you end up feeling that the results don't really reflect your search.

Anyway, a solution is here: Wikiseek.

Wikiseek is a search engine, kind of like Google, but specifically for Wikipedia. A lot more powerful than the Wikipedia search mechanism and you still get that Google-like interface that you're already used to.

Enjoy!

Google Earth: a terrorist attack's planner

Google is discussing with military agencies in Iraq after learning that terrorists attacking British bases in Basra appear to have been using aerial footage from Google Earth to pinpoint strikes.

The military agencies decided to discuss this issue with Google after seizing documents, which were obtained in raids on insurgents' homes, that were printouts from photos taken from Google Earth. These photos show the location of buildings, tents, latrines and lightly armored vehicles.

This seems to be the way terrorists are planning terrorist attacks in this technology-era, by identifying the location of the most vulnerable areas using satellite pictures on Google Earth.

Source: CNET News

Joost: HDTV over IP

The founders of Skype have recently announced that they will launch a new Internet-based television service, which will be named Joost, that consists on the very first high-definition television content transmission service over the Internet.

This project will host not only content from the big media companies, as well as independent content from media users (kind like YouTube but with piracy-awareness control), and it will be totally free since it will work under a business model based on advertising.

However, the service will only be up and running for everybody on the summer of 2007. You could apply for beta testing, though.

Source: Reuters Tech News

How you're gonna pay for that: cash or credit card? Neither, with my cell phone!

I've been dreaming about something like this for a long time now: using the cell phone like a wallet, using its communication features to act as a payment system. This could simplify a lot of the daily shopping :-)

Now, we're getting close to that. Visa, the company with largest payment system in the planet, and Nokia, one of the world's largest cell phone manufacturer, joined forces to launch a global system to turn mobile phones into wallets. Users can pay for groceries and other purchases by swiping a phone over a reader that electronically communicates with a microchip on the phone. But phone owners must confirm the purchase with the push of a button (for security reasons in case your phone gets stollen) and complete the deal.

The wireless standard that will link mobile phones with payment systems in stores and elsewhere will be the Near Field Communication (NFC) chip, which will be hidden under the phone cover and makes contact when swiped over a reader.

Source: Reuters Tech News

Apple's iPhone is here!

What a great way to start the new year. Finally, Steve Jobs has presented the most awaited device: the iPhone.

Even though a lot of people have tried to guess what the iPhone would look like, nothing came close to what was really unveiled.

It's quite a piece of work, not that innovative from the individual features point of view, but quite impressive when everything is put together: a mobile phone, an iPod and a wireless internet device.

You can find interesting features such as:

• widescreen iPod with touch screen controls for music and video
  
• web browsing and mail
• integrated google maps (no GPS support though)
  
• all kinds of widgets (weather, stocks, etc...)
• multi-touch screen (very handy for zooming maps and photos)
• advanced sensors (to detect when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape, or an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts the display’s brightness to the appropriate level for the current ambient light)
  

Mobile phone manufacturers should look out for the iPhone. It looks quite impressive.
However, Apple should also prepare for other issues, like fighting for the 'iPhone' trademark.

Now, all we have to do is wait for the release of the iPhone and see what users will say about it.