Published in September 30th, 2007
Let’s face it, we’ve only got what, maybe three or four hundred years left to enjoy the great outdoors before pollution levels eventually prohibit even stepping foot outside without our personal breathing apparatus. Well Suzuki thinks that it will be in this bleak and toxin-filled future that motorized single-passenger vehicles like the will finally thrive, and is preparing to capture a piece of this potentially lucrative market with a concept transportation system known as PIXY + SSC. Scheduled to be unveiled at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show, this dynamic duo consists of a rolling transporter (SSC, or Suzuki Shared Coach) which can carry up to two PIXY runabouts — fully-enclosed, three wheeled pods that will let you comfortably navigate a toxic or post-nuclear world. Suzuki plans to make these available “well before it becomes impossible to walk to our dealerships.” Click on for a high-res pic…
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Published in September 30th, 2007
ALBANY, N.Y. - The social networking Web site Facebook has been warned that it could face a consumer fraud charge for failing to live up to claims that youngsters there are safer from sexual predators than at most sites and that it promptly responds to concerns, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said Sunday. ADVERTISEMENT
“We expect an immediate correction eliminating the dangers exposed by our investigation,” said the spokesman, Jeffrey Lerner. Cuomo announced last week that he had subpoenaed Facebook after he said the company did not respond to “many” complaints by investigators who were solicited for sex while posing as 12- to 14-year-olds on the site. Officials from Cuomo’s office met with Facebook on Friday after they said Facebook took three days to answer calls and e-mails from state investigators. An official in Cuomo’s office said he and others are scheduled to meet with Facebook representatives this week and anticipate changes will follow immediately. “We said, `You have got to make accurate representations on your Web site,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because court filings haven’t yet been made. “What we told them is, `Correct the language describing the site and stop marketing yourself as this pristine Web site … parents have a misimpression. You can’t mislead people.” Lerner said Facebook’s contention of being safer than most sites was accurate when it started out as a closed site 3 1/2 years ago. But it’s now much larger, and the safeguards and apparently the response times for complaints aren’t what they once were, he said. There was no immediate response to e-mail and phone messages left for a Facebook representative. But a statement issued a week ago stated the company was concerned about Cuomo’s claim that sexual predators could use the site to meet with children. “We strive to uphold our high standards for privacy on Facebook and are constantly working on processes and technologies that will further improve safety and user control on the site,” Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker said in the statement. Lerner said Facebook has continued to promise to cooperate.
Published in September 30th, 2007
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The stars of two of the most infamous celebrity sex videos to surface on the Internet may be headed for holy matrimony. ADVERTISEMENT
Onetime "Baywatch" beauty Pamela Anderson and Rick Salomon, a former boyfriend of Paris Hilton, applied for and were granted a marriage license in Las Vegas on Saturday, the syndicated TV show "Access Hollywood" has reported. Representatives for Anderson and Salomon were not immediately available for comment on Sunday. Earlier this month, Anderson, 40, said on the talk show hosted by comedian Ellen DeGeneres that she was engaged, but declined to identify her fiancee, other than to say he was a poker player, according to "Access Hollywood." It would be the third marriage for Anderson, who gained international stardom playing buxom lifeguard C.J. Parker on the TV show "Baywatch." Anderson and her first husband, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, with whom she appeared in a widely circulated sex video, divorced in 1998 after three years of marriage and two children. She and her second husband, Kid Rock, divorced last year after four months of marriage. Las Vegas police this month cited Rock for suspicion of battery after a scuffle between him and Lee at the MTV Video Music Awards show. Salomon was briefly married in 2002 to actress Shannen Doherty of the TV hit "Beverly Hills, 90210," but their union was annulled. He later dated Hilton in a relationship memorialized in an infamous "night-vision" sex tape that also gained wide Internet exposure before it was distributed as a porn film titled "One Night in Paris."
Published in September 30th, 2007
In the era of Web 2.0 that sees content going digital and people communicating through blogs and wikis, Hewlett Packard says the printing world needs to keep pace. Its solution, dubbed Print 2.0, aims to provide a quality printing experience no matter where the content resides. The goal? Keeping those print drums rolling. ADVERTISEMENT
With the recent launch of a host of new laser and inkjet printer offerings, HP also outlined what it's calling Print 2.0, its strategy for printing in a digital world. Content is moving to the Web says Jean-Paul Desmarais, IPG marketing manager for HP Canada, and printing needs to adjust. That means taking steps to optimize printing from the Web, an exercise which today can be problematic. While people are communicating more online and moving their information to a digital medium, Desmarais says that doesn't mean they're abandoning paper. Indeed, he says statistics around pages printed continue to trend upward. People want to print things that are valuable to them, he says. "Our strategy is to make sure wherever people find things of value to them, they can have a good printing experience," said Desmarais. "Our business will remain strong as long as we continue to give people the ability to print wherever they find valuable content." HP's printing strategy is around allowing people to print that valuable information, no matter where it resides. To that end, Desmarais said HP has worked with companies like Microsoft to enhance the interface between its print engine and the Web browser to improve print performance, and a new preview tool will let a user see what their page will actually look like when it prints, before it prints. On the channel side, Desmarais said HP wants to help its partners change the conversation with its customers from one around printers to one around document management. "We're very much partners with the commercial channel and we need to very much work together to be successful," said Desmarais. "Partners who have expertise and provide document management to their customers are well positioned to grow." He adds when it comes to a discussion around workflow and document management partners can leverage HP's other hardware and software solutions, from storage to services, which can be a competitive advantage. "It's an advantage HP can bring to the table that none of our competitors can," says Desmarais, adding HP's IPG Elite partner program is designed to help and reward partners that leverage the full HP portfolio around document management, and this month the vendor is offering a promotion this month for a free software accessory package to enable document management and tracking. "We feel we're very strongly positioned in the marketplace with the best products, the best partners, and the best understanding of what our customers need," says Desmarais. While the conversation is moving away from printing on its own toward document management, Desmarais said we're still a long way from the paperless office, if indeed we'll ever get there. Printing remains a key part of the equation. "People continue to choose to print more each year. That's because people want to print valuable content, and there's more valuable content becoming available," he says. "People just prefer to print, and want to work from a printed page." A slightly different view is held by Brad Hughes, an analyst following the printer market with IDC Canada in Toronto. The most valuable content is remaining digital, he says, and rather printed copies are becoming more transitory. "People are still printing obviously but that paper copy isn't as important," said Hughes. "People print stuff off to read while they're on the bus or on the toilet and then throw it out, leaving the most important copy of the product as the virtual one." However, while people might be reading more off the screen in the consumer space, in the business world prints are still on the rise. For the enterprise, says Hughes, the printed page remains an important part of doing business, such as the marketing brochure left with a potential client. The Web world is still a threat however, and Hughes says HP is ahead of the curve with some of the new tools it's releasing, particularly those designed to make it easier to print from Web browsers. He adds making the tools free is a good strategy by HP. "As long as you're going to print in the end, HP wins. They assume, and rightly so because they have 50 per cent of the market, that when you print it's more that likely going to be on HP pages," said Hughes."It's a neat go to market model. It doesn't necessarily translate into more printer sales but it does mean more prints, or at least maintaining current print levels, which is obviously more important profit-wise for HP."
Published in September 30th, 2007
Thermaltake’s DH 102 HTPC chassis rocks 7-inch touchscreen
Posted Sep 30th 2007 4:44PM by
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We know, not everyone sits within touching distance of their HTPC, but tossing a seven-inch touch panel into such a chassis provides excellent if nothing else. Thermaltake’s DH 102 HTPC enclosure manages to include just that, along with a piano black mirror coating and aluminum front panel, wireless remote, front-mounted jog dial, USB 2.0 / FireWire ports, built-in Media LAB interface, and space for a number of internal hard drives. Unfortunately, pricing details have yet to be released, but if it ends up a bit too pricey for you, there’s always the DH 101 that forgoes the snazzy (albeit potentially unnecessary) touchscreen and replaces it with a smaller LCD (or none at all).
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Published in September 30th, 2007
They sure do look beautiful flying in formation during their annual migration, but when one of Illinois’s rare crashes and burns on a busy Moscow street corner, well, it’s never a pretty sight. Check out another pic of the carnage after the break…
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Published in September 30th, 2007
Hello Newman, your MP4P E350 video player is looking a little smudgy today, but but we’re willing overlook that for your 3.6-inch screen and touch controls. Well, not really, but maybe somebody in China will, ’cause it’s available there now, and that’s probably where it’s going to stay.
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Published in September 30th, 2007
NEW YORK - IAC/InterActiveCorp, the Internet company controlled by media mogul Barry Diller, plans to relaunch its Web site Monday with new games, more prizes and plans to add social networking functions. ADVERTISEMENT
The site also now incorporates a search toolbar that links iWon users to the company’s search engine. Diller has made growing Ask a priority and pledged to use the search engine as “the glue” to bring together IAC’s myriad Internet businesses, which include LendingTree, Citysearch, Evite, Zwinktopia and others. IWon’s relaunch brings a relic of the dot-com era into the era of social networking, as the popularity of MySpace and Facebook have changed the way people use the Internet. The site will eventually offer social networking features such as the ability to build personal profiles, chat and use Facebook widgets, iWon Vice President Tim Allen said. After its 1999 launch, iWon was bought by AskJeeves, then based in Emeryville, Calif., which was taken up by IAC. It has since developed into a portal, trying to draw visitors with a wide-ranging set of features outside of online games, such as news, TV and movie listings and sports scores. The new site design will focus primarily on casual games, a growing area that Allen says is now the third most popular reason people go online. The site will still offer its $1 million annual sweepstakes and will start to give away $10,000 a day during the week and $1,000 a day on weekends. He said too few users were winning prizes on the old site, so the new version is designed to give away millions of dollars each year to thousands of users. “It’s like being in Vegas, only without the risk,” he said. Beginning Monday, visitors can play games such as mah jong, blackjack, poker and solitaire as well as instant win games such as Spin2Win. The new site has more than 70 games, up from 10, and there are plans for a total of more than 150 games by the end of the year. iWon estimates there are now 217 million people who play casual games online. Since its 1999 launch, iWon has given away more than $70 million in cash and prizes, with its biggest draw the $1 million yearly sweepstakes. IAC also recently relaunched its shopping Web site with an eye toward capitalizing on social networking. Its new tagline is “shopping gone social.”
Published in September 30th, 2007
Audio Technica’s no to high-end cans, and we must say, its flagship set for 2007 (its words, not ours) looks mighty sexy. The ATH-ESW9 Sovereign Wood Headphones are crafted from “Japan’s finest Hokkaido cherry tree,” feature 42-millimeter neodymium magnet drivers with fiberglass housing support, and come bundled with a carrying case to keep these beauties clean when not in use. You can pick these up to listen to (or just look at) come October 19th for ¥37,800 (or about $330).
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Published in September 30th, 2007
Like most teens, Richmond, Va., eighth graders have active online lives — and that’s exactly why they’re so taken with Rusty McGuire’s class.
“What you guys have to think about is, how much information do you put on your social networking pages?” McGuire says to the assembled students.
McGuire is not a teacher. He’s a prosecutor who goes after online sexual predators. But he also works hard at keeping these students at Moody Middle School — and at other schools across the state — from becoming victims, reports CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras.
“You all will talk to somebody online and then want to meet them in person. And that scares me to no end,” McGuire told the class.
It’s this generation’s “scared straight” — the 1970’s effort to keep kids out of trouble.
So many today are so computer savvy that Virginia now requires every public school student get lessons in online safety, starting in kindergarten. It’s the first state law of its kind.
“We realize that it’s a public safety issue, because we see the increase in Internet related crimes — dramatically in Virginia,” said Bob McDonnell, Virginia’s state attorney general.
“One out of 4 kids aged 10 to 17 will receive at least one unwanted sexual solicitation during those years, and only 1 in 4 of those will tell their parents,” he added.
The number one reason they don’t tell is because they’re worried their parents are going to take the Internet (away), so to them it’s not in their best interest to tell their parents,” says McGuire.
With kids often more computer capable than their parents, schools across the country are making Internet safety part of the lesson plan.
“Does everybody here know more about the Internet than their parents do?” Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler asks a group of third graders.
“Yes!” they all agree.
In Maryland, third graders learn about online do’s and don’ts with the help of cartoons.
Rusty McGuire knows that kids often believe they’re invincible and don’t realize that what they put online can be accessed by anyone with a computer.
McGuire’s job is to teach them rules for how to stay safe — and the kids are listening.
Asked what the most important thing he learned in the day’s lecture, eighth grader Dewi Smith says, “Not to give out your full name on the Internet, because it’s forever and they can find you.”
Classmate Tyra Beamon, agrees “I’m sure many of us will still keep our MySpace accounts, but I will definitely change some of my, like, I’ll set it to private and change those things.”
Among the top cybersecurity tips for parents: keep your computer in a central location in your home, and be aware of other computers your children may be using.
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